


Sunday, After The War

by gyroscope



Series: Always Antifascist [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Activism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Break Up, Culture Shock, Exes to Lovers, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Military Backstory, Minor Character Death, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Sam Wilson, Polyamory, Racism, Refugees, Reunion Sex, Social Justice, Suicidal Thoughts, Therapy, Wakanda (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 03:27:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20941514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gyroscope/pseuds/gyroscope
Summary: The truck came to a halt, and they all stumbled out onto soft ground. It was full dark outside, but in the distance Sam could see lights, bright blueish white and warm yellow, stretching out in irregular patterns, like seeing a city from the air at night.Directly to the side of the truck was a building, with stone steps and a ramp leading up to an open door; and standing in the doorway was a middle-aged man, wearing a patterned robe over loose trousers and sandals.“Welcome, my friends,” he said, looking along the little row of filthy, exhausted Americans. Then he smiled, and said the last thing Sam was expecting to hear. “Welcome to Wakanda.”Sam Wilson grows up dreaming of Wakanda, convinced that the rumours of a rich, technologically advanced African country must be true. As an adult, he puts those stories aside to focus on the real world: military service, emergency medicine, activism. Later, he learns that the rumours are true.(Also, along the way, he finds and loses and reunites with Bucky Barnes.)A modern AU about identity, history, revolutionary movements, break-ups, therapy, and finding happiness in difficult circumstances.





	Sunday, After The War

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sort of prequel-meets-sequel to _Sometimes Antisocial_, though I’ve done my best to make it readable as a standalone story. For people who haven’t read _SA_, I think all the context you need is that it's a modern no-powers AU with political/activist/social justice themes, in which Sam and Bucky meet and get together in 2017 while involved in antifascist direct action.
> 
> Huge thanks to [Calliope_Soars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calliope_Soars/pseuds/Calliope_Soars) and [gracelesso](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracelesso/pseuds/gracelesso) for beta reading. Any remaining errors are mine, obviously.
> 
> [There is a Spotify playlist for this story here!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2XyD9XkhM7LBz1aH8cJFmv)
> 
> This story features art by [Nejinee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nejinee/pseuds/Nejinee), who swept in at short notice to collaborate with me and is as incredibly nice as they are ridiculously talented. <3

> “We said even before this happened, and we’re going to say it after this and after I’m locked up and after everybody’s locked up, that you can jail revolutionaries, but you can’t jail the revolution. You might run a liberator out of the country, but you can’t run liberation out of the country. You might murder a freedom fighter, but you can’t murder freedom fighting.”
> 
> \- Fred Hampton

### 2030 | United States

Being back in the US is… Sam can’t get his head around it. It doesn’t feel real.

He’s looking around, drinking it all in, the airport and the people and the signs in English and the – holy shit, there’s a McDonalds. Sam could eat some American junk food right about now.

In a way, it doesn’t feel that different from coming back off a long overseas deployment. In other ways, it’s the biggest upheaval his life has had since – well. Since the trouble that sent him from America to Wakanda in the first place.

This journey back to the US has been planned for months. Wheels have been turning much longer, way above Sam’s head. For years, maybe, at least since the last American election. Kings and Presidents and high-level diplomats meeting, dropping hints, implying offers, bartering with power. All so that Sam and a few other American troublemakers can quietly fly back to the country of their birth, reunite with their families. Maybe stick around, who can say. They have dual citizenship now. It almost feels like too much freedom.

The airport looks different, shiny and new, holographic advertisements and automated passport-checking machines and a security line that moves so fast Sam barely has time to feel stressed. The metal detectors and x-ray machines look weird, jarring, and it takes him a while to figure out why: they’re ten years advanced from what he remembers, and yet probably still at least ten years behind what they got back h– back in Birnin Zana, in the tiny commercial airport that didn’t even exist when Sam first got there. Not much need for airports in a closed country; up until two years ago, there’d just been some sort of space age helipad for the King’s personal aircraft. The very few others to cross the border had come by road.

He sees the banner go up first, white fabric wobbling on wooden poles, _welcome home Sam_ in big black letters. And then, below and around it, smiling faces, people waving. For a moment they’re just a blur, he doesn’t recognize anyone, and his breath catches in his chest, are they all here, are they –

Of course they are.

His next thought is, god, his parents look so _old_. And it’s a ridiculous thing to think, because of course they look ten years older than the last time he saw them in the flesh, and also because he’s seen them at this age, on the one video call he was allowed to make, just a few weeks ago, so it shouldn’t be a shock. But Pop’s leaning heavily on a walking stick and Mom’s hair is whiter than he thought. And Sarah’s kids, Jesus Christ. Last time Sam saw them Jody was seven, Paulie was nearly five. Now they’re teenagers, as tall as their mom, almost as tall as Sam.

“_Sammy_,” he hears, and he almost loses his footing as Sarah throws herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck and clinging to him.

She smells the same. It’s her hair oil, maybe? Perfume? He never paid that much attention, never thought that he’d be separated from his sister for long enough to forget –

She finally lets go of him and takes a step back, wiping a hand quickly under her eyes.

“God, you look just the same,” Sam says.

“Don’t flatter me,” she says, sniffing, and punches him softly in the arm; and then everyone’s crowding around, all talking and crying and trying to hug him at once, and he stops trying to pretend he isn’t crying too.

A couple minutes later they let go of him, though they don’t stop talking, questions about the flight and if he’s eaten and how he’s feeling and has he picked up his bags yet?

“This is it, Mom,” Sam says, hoisting his backpack onto his shoulder, tapping the extended handle of the suitcase. She looks taken aback for a second – did she expect him to step off the plane with ten years’ worth of new belongings, bags and boxes ready and waiting to move back into his old bedroom? – but then pulls him in for another hug.

“Let’s get you home,” she says.

“Sure,” Sam says, and they head towards the parking lot.

Driving home from the airport, he can’t stop looking out of the window, a tally running through his head, what’s changed, what hasn’t. As they get into south DC, into Mom and Pop’s neighborhood, things start to look more and more familiar, though there are plenty of shiny new apartment blocks and coffee shops to catch his eye.

They stop at a red light, a junction of four streets, and Sam finds himself looking over to his left, craning his head around to see through the far window, past Sarah and the kids all crammed into the backseat. That one corner, where the sidewalk widened out, in front of the – it’s a sushi restaurant now, but it used to be a 7-11, and before that a tiny Hispanic church. That’s the corner where he first saw the radical book stall.

### 1997 | United States

There was always something going down on that street corner. Street preachers, musicians, announcements of a community meeting, guys selling their home-recorded tapes and CDs.

He doesn’t remember precisely when the book stall first appeared. He saw it on a weekday afternoon, on his way home from school. It was a warm day. He was ten years old, most likely, maybe eleven.

Maybe the book stall had already been there for weeks or months before he noticed it, and he was just preoccupied with school or skateboarding or comic books or nagging his parents to take him to Six Flags. Maybe the first day he saw it was the first day of its existence.

It was just a table, really. A basic wooden folding table, covered with books and pamphlets and newspapers. Some printed as cheap as possible, cramped lines of typewritten ink on sheets of rough, off-white paper. Some books with shiny-smooth covers, the names of writers and publishers that were sort of familiar, from the bookshelf in his parents’ room that had yet to really catch his interest. There were bright posters and flyers in black and green, yellow and red.

Two men stood behind the stall, one wearing an eye-catching green and orange dashiki, the other in a tight black t-shirt that clung to his arm muscles. Sam can picture him, still, clear as day, and remember the sickening fear in his stomach, too, the fear of looking too long, of looking in the wrong way, of being caught, _looking_.

Sam’s friends glanced over the display, wanted to know if the men were selling comic books, and quickly lost interest on hearing that they were not. They wanted to go to the skatepark, _Sam, come on, we just got outta school, you don’t wanna stay here with these boring old books_. But Sam shook his head, barely paying attention as they joked and slapped him on the shoulder and ran off.

The book was small, thin. The cover was matte black. Like several other pieces of literature on the stall, it featured the familiar shape of Africa, as you’d see it on a world map. The continent was a shiny gold color, embossed – maybe that was what caught his eye, the way it seemed to push up out of the page, physical, three dimensional. As if it was speaking to him, telling him to reach out and touch it. The text on the cover was also in gold.

_African El Dorado_  
_My journey into the hidden country of Wakanda_

“What’s this one about?” Sam asked, and the man in the black t-shirt smiled down at him, showing perfect white teeth.

“You ever heard of Wakanda?”

“Who wrote it?” Sam touched the text gently, just with the tips of his fingers, and looked up at the men to make sure that was ok. The guy in the t-shirt gave him an encouraging nod.

“It’s anonymous. The brother who wrote it didn’t know if the Wakandans would like him sharing their secrets.”

“Secrets?”

“Luckily most people didn’t believe a word of it. Calling it a conspiracy theory,” and Sam wasn’t sure what that meant, but it seemed to be ok that he was interested, so he picked the book up, flipped it over to read the back.

_THE WORLD’S MOST ADVANCED CIVILIZATION IS AFRICAN_  
_The rest of the world knows Wakanda as a poor, backward country, but one intrepid anonymous writer discovered THE TRUTH! Read about how he secretly crossed the Wakandan border and spent six months living and travelling in the country, finding riches and technology beyond the wildest dreams of any Western country. Discover how the Wakandans have kept their land hidden and protected from the prying eyes and grasping hands of the West! Wakanda: the only African country that has never been invaded or colonized!_

“How much is it?” He had a dollar in his pocket that he’d been intending to spend on a cheeseburger, he always got hungry between school and dinner. How much did books cost? He’d never bought himself a book before.

The man in the t-shirt smiled. “Call it a buck.” The other man gave him a look, one eyebrow raised, and Sam wasn’t going to hang around and see if the price went up. He fished the crumpled dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it over.

“Enjoy,” said the man in the t-shirt, and Sam nodded, picking up the book. He wanted to hold it close, cradle it to his chest like treasure, like a prize; but he shoved it awkwardly into the pocket of his cargo pants and tried to say “thanks,” in a grown-up, masculine sort of way.

~

Something changed, after that. He was aware of something new, something different, and he couldn’t stop seeing it, everywhere he looked. Each time he saw a globe or a map of Africa, he’d be looking over towards the East, searching for that little country tucked away between Uganda, Rwanda, and the Congo.  
  
He started actually listening, when his parents talked about _pan-Africanism_, when people at church mentioned connecting with African churches and sending donations, when anything about Africa came up on the nightly news.

Each time they learned anything about black history in school – which wasn’t often – he’d bring up Wakanda. _Did you know there were no slaves brought from Wakanda to America_, he’d say. When they were allowed to go in pairs to the library and look things up on the CD-ROM Encyclopedia, on the school’s only computer: _did you know, in Wakanda, they have the fastest computers in the world?_ Geography: _Miss, did you know, Wakanda is the only African country that has never been colonized?_ Science: _did you know, in Wakanda there’s a metal called vibranium… Why isn’t vibranium on the periodic table?_

His teachers were not enthusiastic about his obsession.

_Samuel often becomes distracted in class and cannot focus on the topic at hand_, said his school report. _Disrupts classroom discussions… irrelevant questions… lack of respect for teachers._ Teachers trying to say, in vaguely acceptable terms, something he didn’t understand at the time, but would become clearer and clearer over the next few years.

One teacher understood his fascination, to an extent. She was African herself, but from Nigeria, the other side of the continent. He can remember, clear as day, the look on her face, empathic and kind and confused, as she asked, _but Sam, why Wakanda? I hear it’s a beautiful country, but it’s tiny and very poor, and they have closed borders – they don’t allow people from America to go there. I don’t think all these stories can be true, I’m afraid._

And he was back at the book stall again and again, picking up leaflets on activism, history, race studies. In a way, it was where his real education happened. Though, like with so many other things he learned, it would take a long time for him to realize that.

### 2030 | United States

“Tell us about Wakanda,” Jody says, leaning forward, fixing Sam with an intense look. It’s exactly the same expression that used to cross her face as a kid, when she was concerned that something was happening that she didn’t understand, or that adults were talking over her head.

“Pass the potatoes, please,” Sam says. He’s honestly impressed she managed to hold out so long, managed to let Pop get through saying Grace without interrupting.

“_Sam_,” she says, disgusted, but picks up the dish and passes it to him.

“Thanks. What d’you wanna know?”

“Um, _everything_,” she says, voice going up several decibels. She starts ticking off questions on her fingers. “Where did you live, what’s the food like? Is it true they have rhinos and giant goats you can ride on? Did you get to meet the King? Is it weird that they have a King –”

“Jody, _slow down_,” Sarah says, long-suffering.

“I live in an apartment,” Sam says, starting to smile. “Yes to the rhinos but I never saw any giant goats, sorry. Yes, it is weird that they have a King and you know what’s even weirder, when the old King died the new one had to do a ceremonial fight to the death on top of a waterfall –”

“Don’t make shit up,” Jody says, eyes wide.

“Language!” Pop says, but he’s leaning slightly towards Sam too and there’s a smile on his face, like he’s just as excited to hear about it as Jody is.

“So what is the food like?” Paulie says.

Sam takes a huge mouthful of potatoes – amazing, perfect, buttery roast potatoes – before replying. “Almost as good as your grandma’s.”

“Oh, hush,” Mom says, but she’s smiling, and she piles some more chicken onto Sam’s plate as a reward.

"But," Jody says, "how come they got all that tech and nobody knew about it for so long?"

"I think one reason why they got all that tech is _because_ no one knew about it for so long," Sam says.

"You mean because they were never colonized? Is that also how they got so much money? And –"

“Give your uncle a break, good lord,” Sarah says. “He’s back now, you’ve got plenty of time to ask all your questions, you don’t need to know everything right now immediately.”

“Yes she does,” Paulie mutters.

“Yes I do,” Jody agrees, reaching across the table to stick her fingers in Paulie’s hair, making him yelp.

“I always wondered if it was Wakanda that you made it to,” Pop says, and Mom chimes in, “You were obsessed with that place as a child, do you remember?”

“Yeah,” Sam says.

“You had that book about how Wakanda was rich and had the best computers in the world,” Sarah says, reminiscing. “And we all told you it was nonsense, but you were right all along, huh? That must have been a _trip_, when you got there and found that out.”

“It was something, all right,” Sam says. He’s still thinking about how Sarah had said to Jody, _he’s back_. How his mom had seemed surprised that he only had one suitcase with him. He never told them he was moving back to the States permanently, but it seems like that’s what they’re all assuming. What they’re hoping for, maybe. He’s going to have to disappoint them.

“Must be weird coming back, too,” Paulie says.

“Well, I, you know,” Sam says. There’s a lump in his throat all of a sudden. He should have put more thought into this, but the last few weeks have been such a whirlwind, it was easy to avoid thinking about it. Among other things. “I got a job there. I got an apartment. It’s…”

“You’re a citizen of the world now,” Pop says, and there’s pride in his voice, edged with uncertainty and pain. Or maybe Sam’s just imagining that, maybe the uncertainty is actually in him, because he’s not sure he feels like a citizen of anywhere.

America is his past, that’s the problem. In America he _has_ a past, and not just on a personal level, his own thirty-two years as a resident American citizen, his own experiences of America, good and bad. But also the other past, the one that’s written on his face whether he wants it there or not: slave ships and plantations, generations of poverty, oppression, struggle.

In America he has a color, in Wakanda he’s just a man, and yet that isn’t quite true, is it? He made a life for himself there, he learned about the local cultures and followed the local customs. He learned the language, eventually, after a lot of hard work and frustration – languages had never come easy to him. Not like Riley, who'd picked up snippets of French and Kinyarwanda and Swahili and Sokovian and Arabic and Kurdish, easy as breathing.

But he learned Xhosa, eventually. He blended in on the streets. And there was a relief and a joy in that, a freedom, being able to just walk down the street and go into stores and not feel tense, not be seen as a threat, an object of suspicion.

He got used to thinking of Wakanda as home, but he never thought of himself as Wakandan. After a while he mostly stopped thinking of himself as American. He was a man without a country, without a nationality. After all, what had nationhood ever done for Samuel Thomas Wilson? What had America done for him? Left his family to struggle in poverty. Manipulated him into joining its military when he was too young and stupid to know better, used his intelligence and determination and selflessness and strength to hurt and kill innocent people. Told him he was a liberator when really he was an invader. Told him he was saving lives when really he was lining pockets.

_When you’re over there you don’t think about it much_, he’d said to Bucky one time – back in 2017 or '18, probably. When their relationship was new, when they were still trying to make sense of each other. Sam was trying to explain something that had only become clear in his own head over the previous couple of years. _You don’t talk about it. You’ve got a job to do and you do it._

He’d met guys in the Air Force who were proud white nationalists, parading around with Confederate flags and telling any other white guy who’d listen how they had to get their weapons training for the racial holy war. Then there were the even more basic racists, who didn’t even put that much thought into it, just wanted to kill some ragheads; and the patriots who genuinely thought they were gonna end terrorism. And then the guys who’d never even considered the politics of it, just joined up because they couldn’t get a job, or they wanted money for college, or their daddy fought in the last Gulf War.

And then there were the ones like Sam, who slowly started questioning the whole thing, and at some indistinguishable point, realized that they’d become anti-war socialists and anarchists. Alongside getting traumatized, getting used up and then discarded, they got radicalized.

### 2005 | Lackland Air Force Base, Texas

“I coulda been a nurse,” Sam gasped, feet sticking and slipping in the sucking mud as they ran uphill, weighed down by packs and weapons and rain. “I coulda been changing bandages and wearing comfortable shoes in a nice warm hospital right now.”

“I coulda been an architect,” Riley said, laughing – how did the fucker have enough breath left in his lungs to laugh – “if we’re playing that game.”

At the top of the hill was a bottleneck, grunts crowded around the start of the obstacle course, shoving and jeering and encouraging.

“They got much call for architects in Appalachia?” Sam said, grinning, once he’d caught his breath.

“What, you thought we all lived in mud huts?”

“Tree houses,” Sam said, thoughtfully. “Little wooden bridges connecting them like – what’s the movie?”

“Swiss Family Robinson,” Riley said.

“Swiss family _Rileyson_,” Sam said, and Riley groaned out loud.

“That’s the lamest joke I’ve ever heard.”

“Hey, fuck you,” Sam said, and then the crowd at the first climbing wall was clearing, and they were off again.

### 2008 | Eastern Congo

He was never going to get tired of the view out the side of a helicopter. The rush of wind past them, the thrill of the flight. Seeing the land flow by beneath them, rivers and mountains and deserts and villages. His harness holding him safe, an embrace.

They were in the Congo, near the border with Rwanda. Crisis response, search and rescue. Propping up local emergency medical teams, getting soldiers and charity workers in and out of hard to reach spots, keeping the Marines out of trouble. Some friendly propaganda stuff, giving out toys and vaccinations and chlor-floc packets.

It wasn't all fun and games – it was a conflict zone, there was violence everywhere, and most of the victims were civilians – but somehow Sam still had that sense of adventure. Each time he saved a life, each time he got to use his parachute – that would never get old, never – and each time he felt the air whipping past his face as the helicopter picked up speed.

They were airlifting some wounded jarheads back to base when Sam saw it for the first time. He was pretty sure both the wounded men were gonna be ok – obviously they'd be ok, Sam and Riley were the best triage team in the business – and he was enjoying the flight. He looked over to the south-east, and the low mist and clouds seemed to clear for a moment, and he saw a mountain range that he hadn't noticed before. It stretched out for a good few miles, curving around to the east, dominated by one huge peak, snow-capped.

“Where’s that?”

“Huh?” Riley turned to look. Sam pointed out the side of the helo, towards the mountain range.

“What country’s that? With the mountains? Is that Rwanda?”

“You asking me? Hey Addison,” Riley yelled at their pilot. “Where’s that over south east with the mountains?”

Addison let the helo bank to the right slightly, giving himself a better view.

“Is that Rwanda?”

“Nah, due east is Rwanda,” Addison shouted back. “To the south east, with the mountains, that’s Wakanda.”

“That a country?” one of the other guys asked, and Addison made some comment about a bunch of fucking ignoramuses in his helicopter, but Sam wasn’t listening.

_Wakanda_. It wasn’t like – Sam was a grown man, ok, he’d long since realized all his childhood imaginings about Wakanda were nonsense. He got it, of course he got it – of course some people in America, dreaming of civil rights and revolution, would get suckered in by stories of a semi-hidden, vastly wealthy African nation that had never been colonized. He didn’t blame his younger self for believing it, didn’t even blame the crazy dude who’d written the book he’d read, or the well-meaning men on the book stall who’d been so encouraging to a young kid trying to find his place in the world.

He knew better now, though, understood that the whole thing was a fantasy. He’d seen actual pictures, on the news and in serious books, and Wakanda looked just the same as any other dirt poor African country. Farmers and goat herders living in mud hut villages. They must have been doing ok for themselves, because they never seemed to request aid. The big-eyed starving children in the adverts were never Wakandan children. Maybe they were just really good at looking after goats, maybe the soil was really rich and they had good farming skills. But clearly, there were no mysterious mines of science fiction metals worth more than diamonds. No super-advanced technology. No secrets.

Still. He’d like to see it for himself. Just once.

“Be nice to go see those mountains,” Riley said.

“Sure,” Addison yelled back, sarcastic, “we’ll fly over on the weekend for some R’n’R,” and he pulled the helicopter back on course, and when Sam craned his neck to look back, the clouds had thickened again and he couldn’t see any mountains at all.

### 2009 | Mosul, Iraq

Nine weeks of basic. Nearly two motherfucking _years_ of the Pararescue pipeline, including weeks when he thought he’d die approximately three times a day: exhaustion, dehydration, G-force, drowning. Three years on short deployments: medic support on overseas bases, retrieving downed airmen, embedded with the Marines, with Navy SEALs. Helicopters over Rwanda, over Egypt, over Bosnia. Join the military, see the world.

Home every few months, between deployments and retraining. Showing up at his parents’ door in dress uniform, smile on his face, pride and relief on theirs. Getting showed off at church and around the neighborhood. Just starting to dip his toe in the gay scene, check out some bars on the far side of town, flirt with some guys, buy drinks, tell half-true tales of his own bravery and heroism, get taken home, taken to bed.

And then, Iraq.

Something went wrong in Iraq. Or, maybe, a whole bunch of stuff that was already wrong finally began to become clear. Was Iraq really so much worse than anywhere else he’d been? Was it him who’d changed?

The atmosphere was weird. Too calm and too tense at the same time. Like nobody knew what was coming next, but they were hoping if they just hunkered down and kept their heads between their knees, maybe it would pass over and leave them alive.

US troops were clearing out of Baghdad, handing over to the Iraqi security forces. Where they were based, up in the north, there were more soldiers still hanging on – many of them hardened spec ops guys, or swaggering PMC cowboys, bristling with attitude and unnecessary numbers of weapons.

“Someone’s gonna write a book about all this one day,” Riley said, legs dangling off the back of the flatbed truck, watching a bunch of Chuck Norris lookalikes take potshots at metal barrels with racist cartoons chalked on the sides.

“The fuck are we even doing here,” Sam grumbled.

“Shortage of medics,” Riley said. “They’re shipping all our guys back home and these idiots are gonna need someone to patch them up when they flip out and end up shooting themselves in the dick, so –”

That was about when the first bomb went off.

They didn’t know it was a bomb, at first. It was just a big fucking noise, and they hit the dirt, face down behind the truck with their hands over their heads. But the thing about Sam and Riley was, it was their job to run towards danger not away from it, so when a couple seconds had passed and nothing else had exploded, that's what they did.

Smoke was pouring out of a nearby building and there were casualties lying out on the street, Army and local police and civilians; and thank god Sam and Riley were armed and in uniform and always carried first aid kits everywhere they went, because it was a fucking mess. Bullets flying and people screaming in at least three different languages and Sam just kept his head down, kept applying pressure to the wound in this kid’s side. He was a civilian, late teens, and he was probably going to bleed out, but Sam had to try.

“Hey!” A hand came down on his shoulder. An Army officer, scared and furious, getting in Sam’s face. “There’s injured men over there.”

“There’s an injured man right here,” Sam said, looking back down at his casualty. The kid’s eyes were open but he wasn’t focusing, was beginning to get that glazed-over look.

“See to your own people first,” the Army officer yelled, and Sam yelled right back, “go fuck yourself,” which he’d probably regret later. If any of them got a _later_.

“Hey,” Riley shouted over, from where he was crouched over another Army guy, and gave Sam a quick grin. “Why you always gotta be gettin’ yourself in trouble –”

That was when the second bomb went off. 

~

Sam got a concussion, a fractured wrist, an Airman’s Medal for heroism outside of a combat situation, and a lecture from his CO about rushing into the middle of fucked-up shit without authorization. Riley got shipped home in a box.

That was the beginning of the end of his service, though he didn’t realize it at first. The past few years he’d learned how to go through the motions, how to just keep on fucking going, even when it felt inside like everything was falling to pieces. Keep your head down, do the job. There were still lives to be saved.

Helicopters over Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan. That little questioning voice in the back of his head getting louder and clearer all the time, asking _but what are you doing here? What are we all doing here? Are you doing the right thing? When are you gonna stop following orders and start thinking for yourself?_

Missions and rescues and now when he went home on leave his parents didn’t look proud, they just looked worried, and like they didn’t know how to talk to him anymore.

Somewhere in him a clock was ticking, minutes counting down, until the day – just a day, not much different from any other, except for how it was around 365 days after the last time he’d seen Riley’s dumb smiling face – when he’d finally walk into the base office and say, _no. I’ve had enough. I’ve done enough, I’ve lost enough. I quit. Send me home._

### 2030 | United States

His old bedroom is a guest room now, of course. It’s been fifteen years since he lived in it. There’s a queen bed up against one wall, where his twin bed used to be, and a nice framed photograph of some sunflowers where he used to have a bunch of posters.

There’s a cardboard box on the floor by the bed, _Sam_ scribbled on its side in marker, and he hesitates for a minute, hovering. Does he want to see what’s inside, what things his parents felt were important enough to keep boxed up and waiting for him, for ten years?

Curiosity wins out and he sits down heavily on the floor, feeling every minute of forty-two years old when his left knee creaks and a little burst of pain sparks through his lower back. The top pieces of the box have been folded neatly around each other to keep it closed, and two pieces of tape are in place to keep the dust out.

"Shit. Here goes nothing,” he says under his breath, and rips the tape off, opening the box.

The first thing he sees are a few neatly folded t-shirts, under those, it looks like mostly books. Jammed between two books is a large brown paper envelope, stuffed full and so heavy that, as he picks it up, it gives way at one end, depositing an armful of paper into his lap. He puts the envelope to one side, and starts sifting through the paper, pulling things out at random.

It’s – well. It’s his whole life, a certain era of it, anyway. 2011 to 2019, or thereabouts. A life documented in political leaflets, flyers for fundraiser shows, photographs. Friends used to make fun of his fondness for printing out photos, the way he’d carry snapshots around in his wallet and stick them to his bedroom wall. _Get an Instagram like everyone else, Wilson!_

He shuffles some leaflets out of the way and picks up a handful of photos, meaning to skim through them, but the very first one catches his eye and stills his hands.

He doesn’t remember taking this specific photo, but he remembers the room. That warm, sunny, messy kitchen where he’d cooked vegan dinners and stayed up late shooting the shit with roommates and friends. The ramshackle little row house where he’d spent some of the happiest years of his life, the first real home he’d made for himself after leaving the Air Force. The place he’d lived when he started getting properly involved in activism. All those meetings and banner-making and letter-writing evenings, days spent bucket-shaking and sharing petitions and handing out leaflets. Anti-fascism and radical queer politics and migrant solidarity, animal rights and education funding and supporting small businesses. The work was varied, endless, and occasionally even successful.

In the photo, the big wooden kitchen table is cluttered with half-full plates and half-eaten food, tea cups, bottles of cheap wine and beer. Natasha’s sitting dead center, her hair in a disheveled bun, a forkful of food poised halfway to her smiling mouth. She’s turned slightly to her right, presumably speaking to Steve, who’s sitting around the corner of the table. He’s leaning back, tilting his chair on its back legs; both his hands spread out, gesturing. A look on his face that’s just so typically _Steve_, sharp and challenging and impatient, that Sam finds himself looking away, covering the photograph with one hand. As if he could shield himself from it, turn down the volume on what he’s feeling. He doesn’t need all these _feelings_, this unfathomable wreckage of nostalgia and affection and loneliness and yearning.

He drops the photo on the floor and looks back at the pile of papers in front of him.

One little scrap of paper is soft and graying where it’s been folded and unfolded too many times to count, and Sam tells himself not to look, he knows what this is, he doesn’t need to – but he’s unfolding it before he can stop himself. Staring down at the brief lines of text, the familiar handwriting, careful blocky letters.

> _I’m opening the cafe this morning so I’ll be gone by the time you wake up. Stop looking so hot when you’re asleep, it’s not fair. I just want to stay in bed with you and think about how much I love you._  
_B_

It wasn’t even a special occasion, that’s the thing. Bucky must have left him at least fifty notes just like it, sweet little greetings and memos and declarations of love. Sam always intended to keep them, but many must have ended up lost, swept into the trashcan when he tidied his desk, into the laundry basket in the pocket of a pair of jeans. Sometimes he’d flip the paper over and write back, and leave it somewhere that Bucky would find it. He wonders if Bucky kept those ones.

He wonders what Bucky is doing right now.

“It took us three years to get your things back,” Mom says. Sam looks up and she’s standing in the doorway, with a look on her face that’s happy and pained at once.

“Back from where?”

“Police came and bagged it all up, took it away,” Pop says. They both come into the room, sit down on the edge of the bed. Sam stays sitting on the floor, looking up at them. “All your belongings here, your books and clothes and everything from your house – that nice redheaded girl came over and told us about it, said she was sorry they couldn’t stop them –”

“As if she could have,” Mom says.

“They kept all my stuff for three years? The hell were they hoping to find?” He picks up a photo at random. “Incriminating picture of me… um, wearing a very 2012 jacket at a bad party?”

“Maybe incriminating pictures of you with certain people,” Mom says, looking down at the pile of paper on the floor. Sam tries to follow where she's looking, and there they all are.

Sam’s in the middle of the group, his left arm slung around Nick’s shoulders. Nick’s looking dead on at the camera, not smiling – he had limited patience for his younger comrades’ dumb habits of taking too many photos all the time. Erica is on Sam’s other side, black beret perched at a rakish angle on top of her braids. Tyrone sitting on the floor, half turning to look up at the people behind him. Rosalita has one hand on her hip and the other around her girlfriend’s waist – what was that woman’s name? Sam can’t recall. Gabe has a hand covering half his face, but you can still see that he’s laughing.

They look happy. Some of them look terrifyingly young. When was this one taken? 2018, early 2019, maybe? When shit was getting bad, had already gotten bad in so many ways, but they still had energy and hope. Could still laugh while posing for a group photo.

“When they told us you could come back,” Mom says, but her voice cracks and she doesn’t finish the sentence. Sam turns to look up at her, alarmed. No matter how old he gets, he’ll never be able to see his mother cry without feeling that pang in the chest, that guilty desperation to help, to make it stop. He gets up, sits down beside her on the bed so that he can wrap his arms around her.

“It’s ok, Mom. I’m fine. It’s ok.”

“I just want you to be safe,” she says.

“I am safe. I promise. The government promised, remember? The _President_.”

“I’m still not sure about that woman,” Mom says, and Sam bites back a laugh.

“She’s better than the last one, at least.”

“We just don’t want to see you in danger again,” Pop says. “And when you said you’d be at this meeting all weekend –”

“We worry about you, that’s all,” Mom says.

“Please don’t worry about the caucus,” Sam says. “It’s perfectly safe. It’s a social thing, it’s been publicly advertised, there’s gonna be talks and open meetings – you could come along, it’s open to everyone. It’s not like – it’s not like some of the stuff that happened back then,” and he looks down at the photo again. “The situation’s so different now.”

“You don’t have to –” Mom says, then cuts herself off abruptly, too kind to say out loud what she must be thinking. She doesn’t need Sam explaining American politics, telling her how things have changed here in the last ten years. She’s been living through it.

“I’ll be careful,” Sam says. “It won’t be like before. I promise.”

### 2019 | United States

Looking back, Sam can’t remember exactly where they were. Who was gathered together, in what context. Maybe it was one of those long drawn-out evenings at Nick Fury’s apartment. Too many people gathered in the small living room, the air thick with fear and disagreement and tension between generations.

It must have been the tail end of a meeting, after the action points were given out, after the structured discussions devolved into chatting and banter, catching each other up on gossip. Sam remembers sitting on a couch, and the TV was on, and the news was reporting something about a militia. Some group of bored and crazy white people who’d left their small town in the middle of nowhere to spend a weekend in DC, marching around with assault rifles and yelling about how Trump should be President until the end of time, or some such nonsense.

Sam said something about _LARPing for neo-Nazis_, and Rosa laughed, and then one of Nick’s friends wanted to know what on earth LARPing was, and the conversation drifted in that direction for a while.

And then someone said it. Again, he can’t be sure who spoke. He’s got a vague image in his head of one of the younger guys, sharp-tongued and hot tempered, tense skinny shoulders and expressive, gesturing hands. But there were so many kids like that, over the years, that Sam can’t put a name to the face. Anyway, someone spoke up. Leaning forward, eyes fixed on the TV, on the militia uniforms and AR-15s. His voice cutting through the chat like a knife.

“Maybe we need to be more like that.”

And then the silence that fell over the group, a creepy sort of silence, like cold fingers on the back of your neck. Like everyone knew that something had been said that couldn’t be ignored. Couldn’t be taken back.

A few years previously, even a year before, it would have sounded ridiculous.

But it was winter 2019, and the last three years had felt like the longest of Sam’s life. He’d never had so many friends in prison, or being dragged through endless court hearings, losing their jobs and getting hit with fines they couldn’t pay. He’d lost touch with other friends who had burned out and dropped out; disappeared from meetings and demonstrations, taken their names off of mailing lists, admitted guiltily that they just couldn’t do it anymore, not right now, not when the fight was so hard and they never seemed to win.

People had died. A young cousin of Rosa’s, in a detention center. A friend of Gabe’s, over in Missouri, was found in her car at the side of the road, and the local police were calling it a suicide, but –

Less than a year until the next election, and who knew what would happen then?

People were losing hope. People were getting scared. And there was nothing like fear to make you desperate, to get you thinking about things you’d never normally consider.

~

“Let me run something by you,” Nick said, a few weeks later.

“Go ahead,” Sam said. They were sitting on the front porch at Sam’s place, wearing warm sweaters and leather jackets against the winter chill, unwilling to go inside while the sun was still shining.

“I know some people who want to learn to shoot. You’ve given lessons before, right?”

“Right,” Sam said, hesitantly. “For self-defense,” he added.

“Sure,” Nick said. “That’s all I’m asking.”

“Really?”

“Depending on your definition of _self-defense_, maybe.”

“Come on. Nick. Don’t bullshit me,” Sam said.

“We need you, Sam. You got skills and knowledge most of these kids don’t.”

“If they’re just kids and they don’t have the skills and knowledge, maybe they shouldn’t even be thinking about this kind of shit,” Sam said. “This is risky as hell, Nick. I mean even just – even talking about it, even just teaching people how to shoot.”

“You’ve done plenty of other risky shit over the years,” Nick said. “So have I.”

“Not like this. Not risks that could get us all killed,” Sam said.

“Sometimes that’s what it takes.”

Sam shook his head, frustrated. “Hey,” he said. “You knew my uncle Rashon, right? Who lived in the MOVE commune?”

“Yes,” Nick said.

“Well, I didn’t,” Sam said. “I never got a chance to know him. Because the cops dropped a bomb on his house and he died, along with ten other people. Adults and kids. Two years before I was born. I grew up with that. That’s what happens to black revolutionaries in this country, and you know it.”

“I do.”

“Ok, so what’s the contingency plan,” Sam said, because he’d known Nick Fury for nearly seven years, at this point. The man had plans upon plans. He could see the whole scope of the map.

“You know,” Nick said, “the other thing that happens to black revolutionaries in this country, is that they get _out_ of the country when they need to.”

“You gonna put us all on a boat to Cuba?” Sam said.

“I was thinking more like a plane to Africa,” Nick said.

“Come on. Be serious.”

“I am.”

“_Where_ in Africa? Do I get to pick a country? I’ve heard Liberia’s nice this time of year,” Sam said, still not believing a word of it. “How about an island? Can I go to Madagascar?”

“Sam,” Nick said, “I swear, I’m not bullshitting you. If you get a phone call from me telling you it’s time to leave the country, I need you to do it.” His expression changed as he spoke, became more serious, sadder. He turned to look at Sam, fixed him with the intense stare of his one remaining eye. “Promise me.”

“I promise,” Sam said.

~

The shooting range was a strangely comforting place. Sam wasn’t sure what it was – the smell, the sense of focus in the atmosphere. Maybe it was the feeling of quiet confidence that always settled into his bones when he picked up a tool he knew how to use, whether it was a gun or a pen or a first aid kit, in the knowledge that he was in a safe place and all he had to do was practice his skills. Here was something he was good at, but he wasn’t going to be called upon to save – or take – anyone’s life.

As long as these goddamn kids stopped holding real guns like they were water pistols, anyhow.

“Rule one, don’t point those at me unless you’re trying to kill me,” he said, and they looked guilty, and put the handguns back down.

“They’re not loaded,” Tyrone said sheepishly.

“Rule two,” Sam said. “_All_ guns are _always_ loaded, ok? Assume that thing can always kill someone. That’s what it’s made for, it’s not a toy.”

“Ok,” Rosa said, and Ty and Erica both chimed in, “sorry.”

“If you’re gonna use guns, you need to know what you’re doing,” Sam said, and picked one up, to start showing them how to reload.

Because that was the most important thing, wasn’t it? It was an effective way of justifying this to himself, anyway.

Whatever was going on at Nick’s place, whatever discussions were happening about armed struggle and militias and at what point a government became so dangerous that all you could do was pick up a gun, he wasn’t sure he wanted any part of it. He’d seen more than his fair share of death and weapons and destabilization, and he wasn’t convinced – not yet, not quite – that more violence was the answer.

Teaching, though. That he could do. Giving people skills, helping them to protect themselves. If people were going to do shit involving guns, they should know what they were doing. He wasn’t about to just walk away, and then feel responsible for some idealistic dumbass shooting themselves in the foot.

He got home late, that night, and crawled into bed beside Bucky, who was already half asleep. The bedside lamp was on and he had a paperback book in his hand, one finger keeping his place between the pages, but his eyes were closed and he was breathing deep and slow.

"Working late," Bucky murmured, turning, giving Sam a little smile through half-open eyes and messed-up hair. "Everything ok?"

"Everything's fine," Sam said. He leaned over, took the book out of Bucky’s hand and dropped it on the bedside table. Spooned up behind Bucky, kissed the back of his neck. “Go to sleep.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, closing his eyes. Warm and contented and soft.

It was the first time Sam had lied like that. The first time he'd looked at Bucky and thought, _I'm keeping this a secret from you_.

He lay awake for a long time, watching Bucky sleep. Knowing that yet another thing had changed that he couldn't undo.

### 2030 | United States

_DC Democratic Socialist Caucus 2030_, says the huge banner on the front of the building. It’s a nice banner. Professionally printed. Hanging out front of a convention center, all bold and brightly colored like it belongs there. Like Sam belongs here. Like Sam’s kind of people, his kind of activism, belong in convention centers now, rather than kitchens and warehouses and street corners.

Officially, nobody’s supposed to know that Sam’s back. Nobody’s supposed to know about any of them, the twenty or thirty Americans who disappeared ten years ago, smuggled out of the country before the cops or the feds could catch up with them. Nobody’s supposed to know that some of them are now coming back, one or two at a time. Passports reissued and outstanding arrest warrants quietly dropped, on the understanding that they also keep quiet, just slip back home and don’t start causing trouble or drawing attention to themselves.

Unofficially, of course, there’s nowhere like radical leftist gatherings for spreading gossip. If he’s supposed to be keeping his presence in the country a secret, he hasn’t come to the best place. He gives his name to the person at the front registration desk, and their eyes go wide, and they whisper, “_the_ Sam Wilson?”, which is frankly embarrassing.

“Yeah, sure,” Sam says, and the desk person gives him a fist bump that feels more like a salute, and then blushes, and hurries to hand him a programme of the weekend’s talks and meetings.

There’s a whole hall dedicated to talks about Wakanda. _2030: Two Years Since Wakanda Joined The World Stage. African Outreach in the United States. Afrofuturism in the Present: What the Wakandan Trade Deal means for Silicon Valley._

_No thanks_, Sam thinks. Not that it doesn’t all sound interesting, but he’s heard most of already, from the other side. And he doesn’t need any more people recognizing his face or his name, talking to him like he’s some kind of celebrity.

There’s a panel discussion happening in the next room, about feminist activism around the Mexico-Texas border. It’s nearly half over, but he heads in and finds a seat anyway.

The panel turns out to be great. The Q&A session afterwards is less so.

Some youngish white guy gets to his feet, and as soon as he opens his mouth Sam can tell it’s going to be one of _those_.

“Yeah, so I have, not really a question? More an observation really...”

Sam tips his head back, trying not to sigh too audibly. Leaning back in his chair, he happens to glance over to his left, and makes eye contact with the guy sitting a few seats down – white, mid thirties, scruffy hot with light-colored eyes, brown hair peeking out from under a baseball cap. The guy jerks his head towards Mr More Of An Observation Really then looks back at Sam, rolling his eyes and subtly making the universal jerk off motion with his right hand. Sam can’t help smiling, and the guy grins back, neither of them breaking eye contact. And Sam’s feeling it, the little tug behind his belly button, the uncertainty and hint of promise, when suddenly the smile drops off the guy’s face like someone slapped it away.

His eyes widen, mouth falls open, he pushes his hat back up from his forehead and mouths, _Sam?_ And it’s like a trick of the light, a magic eye picture: the guy he’s looking at has broad shoulders and a strong jaw and a stubbly beard, but all Sam can see is that cute skinny kid he’d fallen so hard for, thirteen years ago.

His eyes are the same. Those big eyes with the long lashes that always made Sam’s knees go weak, surrounded with soft little laugh lines now.

The expression on his face is too much, Sam can’t look away, can’t hardly stand to look. Bucky always wore all his emotions right out there on his face, no filter, and right now he’s projecting all this shock and joy and anxiety and desperate hope, and for a moment Sam thinks about running. Just getting up and running out of the hall, out of the caucus, out of the goddamn country.

He doesn’t know what his own face is doing in response, but it’s probably embarrassing as fuck.

He flattens his feet on the floor, grounding. Takes a deep breath in, holds for four, exhales for six. He’s still looking at Bucky. They’re still looking at each other. Sam makes himself look away, glances around. Incredibly, nobody seems to have noticed anything. The young white guy is still droning on with his Observation Really, though the panel moderator looks like she’s about five seconds from interrupting him mid-sentence.

The afternoon sunlight is still streaming in through the window. No cracks have earthquaked open in the floor under their feet.

He looks back at Bucky.

Bucky opens his mouth as if to speak, glances sideways at the panel speakers at the front of the room. He looks back at Sam, and silently mouths one word. _Please_.

Sam stands up, too abrupt, clattering the legs of his chair on the floor. Now he’s drawing attention, making a spectacle of himself. Heads are turning, curious or disapproving looks, a couple of people grinning like they’re expecting some enjoyable drama.

“Sorry,” he mutters. Picks up his bag, looks back at Bucky. Nods, jerks his head towards the door; then turns and starts walking away. Not looking back.

He hears another set of chair legs scraping on the floor behind him, and a voice – so familiar it hurts – quietly apologising, excusing himself for stepping over people’s bags and feet.

He’s not sure where he’s going, if he’s going anywhere in particular. Still not sure he’s not about to make a run for it. He walks through a door and finds himself outside, in a small courtyard. It’s mostly empty, but for a few people sitting around in the sun, talking quietly or reading. There’s a coffee cart in the far corner, and he walks towards it, to have something to walk towards, to have something to do with himself.

Reaching it, though, he’s paralysed again, staring at the menu board with his mouth open idiotically. _American_ coffee. How do you order American coffee? What did all those fake Italian names mean, again? How the fuck could it cost so much?

“Two black coffees please,” Bucky says, making Sam jump a little and turn. He’s followed him out to the courtyard and is standing there with his hand in his pocket, giving Sam a sideways look from under his hat, half nervous, half smiling. Sam looks back at the coffee cart. And then he notices the pot of coffee – plain ordinary American style drip coffee – sitting right there on the counter, beside the little credit card machine.

“Thanks,” he says. His voice sounds fucked up, uncertain and croaky. Bucky nods, taps his wallet on the screen to pay.

“You wanna sit?”

“Sure,” Sam says, and they each pick up a cup of coffee, walk back across the courtyard, sit down on a small wooden bench.

Sam keeps his feet grounded on the floor again, which has the added benefit of turning his body ninety degrees from Bucky’s face. He can still see out of the corner of his eye, though, as Bucky turns to sit facing Sam, putting one foot up onto the bench, balancing the paper cup of coffee on his knee.

_You still don’t sit in chairs like a normal adult_, Sam wants to say. He remembers teasing Bucky about it, back in the day, and Bucky responding that sitting sideways in chairs with your legs at strange angles was bisexual culture. _Don’t be biphobic, Samuel_. Poking Sam in the ribs with one finger, biting his lip to hold back a laugh.

Sam doesn’t feel like laughing right now.

“Sam,” Bucky says.

“Yeah,” Sam says.

“Can you look at me? Please?”

Sam makes himself turn, glances at Bucky’s face, but he can’t hold it, finds himself looking away again, hiding his face in his coffee cup. “It’s been a while,” he says, and then winces. Of all the bland, stupid, heartless –

“Ten years,” Bucky says, and Sam looks back at him, just long enough to see one side of his mouth twitch, like he’s not sure whether to smile or not.

“Ten years,” he agrees.

“So,” Bucky says. “How’ve you been,” and Sam chokes out a laugh, sharp and humorless.

“Oh, you know.”

“When did you get back?” Bucky asks. His voice sounds careful. Quiet and controlled. It sounds like it’s taking him an effort to keep it that way.

“Last night.” Sam manages to look up, hold eye contact; even though it leaves him breathless, hurts like a punch in the gut. “This is the first time – I haven’t been back. I wasn’t, we weren’t – allowed,” and he thinks, not for the first time, how stupid it sounds. _Not allowed_, like they were preschoolers in a time-out for bad behaviour.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. His shoulders hunch a little and he looks down at his coffee cup. Sam can’t tell if he believes what he’s hearing.

“I didn’t want to leave,” Sam says, abrupt, too loud; and a couple of heads turn towards them, but when Bucky looks back up at him, he’s trying to smile.

“Ah, fuck, Sam. I know _that_.”

### 2020 | United States to Wakanda

They’d been together nearly three years but it was their first proper vacation as a couple, and by some miracle, Sam had managed to get a whole two weeks off work. They’d drive to Louisiana, hugging the coast on the way down, heading west at Jacksonville – “we’re not going to Florida, Florida’s for assholes,” Bucky had declared, with all the attitude of a hip New York queer – spend a few days in New Orleans and then drive back up inland, through Alabama and Tennessee. It was early summer, gorgeously hot and sunny. The car was on loan from some friend of a friend, and it was an ancient blue sedan with a stick shift and no air conditioning, but the _freedom_ of it. Their own car, that they could drive wherever they wanted, and play music in and keep the sunroof open and even sleep in if necessary.

They needed a vacation, they fucking _deserved_ a vacation. Sam didn’t realize, until they were a couple hundred miles away from DC, how much he’d needed to get away. How much stress he was under, with work and the usual struggles and now all this new shit that Nick wanted from him. How for months he’d been feeling weighed down, like he was carrying all this fear and suspicion and sense of impending danger, sitting on his shoulders and compressing his lungs. Pressing him down into the earth.

Leaving town wouldn’t fix any of that, of course. But he could leave it behind for a little while.

Sam remembers Bucky in the car, leaning out the window as they sped down I-95, long hair tousled from the wind. On the beach in South Carolina, suntanned & laughing, splashing sea water at Sam’s face. In a gay dive bar in Savannah, flirting with the bartender and giving Sam those little looks back over his shoulder, eyes dark, hint of a provoking smile at the corners of his mouth, knowing.

Bucky sacked out across the back seat of the car, shirtless, ripped up old jeans hanging off his hipbones, feet in flipflops resting out the open window. Cute and sweaty and hungover from partying too late with some dumb kids in the parking lot of the motel. Jolting awake and swearing as Sam dropped a cold can of iced tea on his belly, laughing at him, “get up in the front seat, asshole, this ain’t _Driving Miss Daisy_.”

“Oh, is it my turn to drive?” he joked, sitting up, doing that little exaggerated shrug he used to do, rolling his shoulders back, turning his left side just slightly towards Sam.

“You only need one hand to steer,” Sam said, the idea taking shape in his head, and within minutes they were doing eighty down the freeway, Bucky in the driver’s seat and Sam’s hand on the gearshift and both of them laughing like maniacs.

In New Orleans they got to stay in an actual apartment, a tiny studio belonging to an artist friend of Steve’s, who was off doing a summer study abroad programme in Europe. They walked around the city a lot, did some tourist shit, spent more money than they could really afford on interesting food and lethally strong cocktails. Having a real bed to sleep in, and not having to drive for hours each day, they fucked a lot: the kind of lazy playful hours-long sex they hadn’t had the time or energy for in – Sam didn’t care to think about how long.

One afternoon they’d come back from a long walk, fucked, had a nap, fucked again in the shower, and were lazing in bed, enjoying a fake argument about whether to go out for dinner or order takeout. Sam, in favor of going out, had put on clothes after showering, like a civilized adult, and was looking for a pair of clean socks.

“Why get dressed and go out when we could just stay right here,” Bucky said, lying back on the bed, stretching, letting his legs fall open slightly, so the towel around his waist slid up his thighs.

“Shouldn’t I have worn you out already?” Sam said, feeling a stupidly fond smile cross his face.

“_Yes_,” Bucky said, grinning, “you wore me out so good I can’t _possibly_ get up and walk to a restaurant – ah, Sam! Get off,” as Sam jumped back onto the bed and crawled on top of him, jokingly pinning him to the bed.

“I’ll take you to Antoine’s,” Sam crooned in his ear. “We’ll get the tasting menu and I’ll fuck you in the bathroom between each course –”

“You can’t afford Antoine’s,” Bucky said, laughing and squirming underneath him.

“I’ll buy you an appetizer and then fuck you in the bathroom and then they’ll ask us to leave,” Sam said, starting to laugh.

“Wow, you know how to treat your man right. Why didn’t we come to New Orleans years ago?”

“I think –” Sam started to say, but whatever he thought, he never got to finish the sentence, because right then, a phone started ringing.

For a moment they just looked at each other.

“Is that – where’s that coming from?” Bucky said.

“It’s not –” Sam said, and then he remembered. He scrambled off the bed, dug into the inner pocket of his backpack, and pulled out the little ten dollar phone. _Unknown numbe_r, said the screen. It was still ringing.

He turned back to the bed, the phone in his hand. Bucky sat up.

“You brought a burner phone on our vacation?” he said. Still smiling, as he said it, like he was waiting for the punchline, and Sam turned away. Turned his back on him, before answering the phone.

"Wilson?"

"Hey, Nick," Sam said, careful to keep his voice light. "What’s up?"

“Is now a good time?” Fury said. Which meant, Sam knew, _is anyone else around_.

“Gimme a second,” he said, pushing his feet into his sneakers.

"Sam, what’s going on?" Bucky whispered, that worried little furrow between his eyebrows. Sam shrugged, pointed to the door, didn't wait to see Bucky's reaction before walking out of the apartment, down the stairs to the street.

It was warm outside, twilight, fairly quiet. Some kids drinking out front of the apartment building opposite, a few people coming and going from the little grocery store a few doors down. Sam looked from one side to the other, scanning the street automatically, but didn’t see any cops or suspicious looking cars.

“What’s going on?”

“Listen, Sam,” Nick said, and he sounded _tired_, older, somehow, than he’d been when Sam had last seen him, a few weeks back. “I’ve got an offer for you. Remember that trip we were talking about?”

“To Africa,” Sam said. There was a strange feeling in his stomach, a slow falling sensation. Cold sweat on the back of his neck.

“That’s the one.”

“When?”

“Tonight. Once in a lifetime opportunity.”

“What about you?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Nick said. “I got other plans.”

“Is anyone going with me?”

“Just you for now.”

“Should I – do I need to let anyone know I’m going?”

“Better not.”

“What do I need to take? Money?”

“No, don’t worry about that. It’s all in hand. You just need to be in place for the pickup.”

“Ok. Where –”

“I’ll text you the location,” Nick said. An air of finality to it.

Silence, for a moment. Sam’s knees felt weak, and he allowed himself to slide down the wall of the building, folding into a squat, head down.

“Are you sure –” he started, then stopped himself.

“I wouldn’t be calling if I wasn’t sure.”

“Yeah.”

“Trust me.”

“You know I do.”

“Good luck,” Nick said, and then all Sam heard was the dial tone.

So he picked himself back up off the floor, and went back into the apartment, wondering what the hell he was going to tell Bucky.

~

He can see them now, see Bucky, standing in the living room of the apartment. Hastily dressed in his jeans and t-shirt, bare feet, hair a mess. Tears pouring down his face. He always cried easier than Sam and for the first couple years Sam liked it. It seemed to say, here’s a guy who’s in touch with his emotions, not afraid to show how he feels. Not like the macho assholes Sam had a bad habit of hooking up with in his more closeted days. Like maybe things were changing, like Sam and his fellow thirty-somethings would be the last generation too bottled up to cry, and guys Bucky’s age were a new kind of man.

But later on – when the shit hit the fan – Bucky and all his wide open emotions just made him furious, resentful. Sam’s life was on the line, he was terrified, wanting nothing more than to collapse into grief himself, but then what would happen? He had to hold it together, keep himself safe. And that was hard enough without having to mop up someone else’s tears at the same time.

“You don’t have to go – we can fight this – we can get you a lawyer –”

“Bucky, come on. Don’t be naive,” Sam said.

“Where do they want you to go?”

“I don’t know, he didn’t say exactly –”

“Do you trust this? How d’you know it’s not bullshit?”

“I trust Nick, ok? If he says shit’s about to go down, it is.”

“Why won’t you tell me where you’re going?”

“I’m trying to keep you safe too,” Sam snapped. “What do you think’s gonna happen as soon as you get home? Maybe sooner? The cops are gonna come for you, for my family, they’re gonna ask where I’ve gone and why, you know what they’re capable of,” and Bucky took a little step back, shaking his head. “Sorry. Look, it’s, it’s in Africa, ok? That’s all I know, we just – we talked about it. Before. Nick said, if anything happened, he could get people out of the country, and –”

“I could – I can come with you.”

“No.”

“Why not?” Furious, hurt. “Your white boyfriend isn’t welcome in Africa?”

“Jesus, it’s not – I'm not going on fucking vacation,” Sam shouted back. “But yeah, sure, let’s just make this all about you and whether you feel _welcome_ –”

“I don’t see why you need to _run away_ –” Bucky started.

“You’d rather see me locked up for the rest of my life?” Sam was on his feet, yelling. “Would that be good for your activist cred? You could start doing prison reform work and acting like you know all about everyone else’s struggles because of your black boyfriend in jail,” and Bucky’s eyes were huge and tearful and Sam almost wanted to stop himself, he knew it was fear and heartbreak making Bucky say this shit, but. “I want a life. I won’t martyr myself. I’ve done a lot for the movement and I’ll do more, but I won’t do it from a prison cell.”

He turned away. He needed to pack. What the fuck did you pack, to leave the only country you’d ever really known?

His bag was sitting neatly against the wall in the bedroom. His old Air Force backpack, worn desert camo. Packed for a summer road trip, not for fleeing his country in the middle of the goddamn night. T-shirts and cutoff shorts, swimming trunks, flipflops, one nice pair of slacks and a linen shirt, baseball cap, sunglasses. Toiletries in the bathroom, a few other personal items scattered around the apartment.

“Take my bag,” Bucky said. He was standing in the bedroom door, arm crossed tightly over his torso. Like he was hugging himself, holding his guts in, holding himself back.

“What?”

“That’s too recognisable. If the cops are looking for you, they know you’re a veteran. Take mine,” he jerked his head towards his own bag, a plain black duffle.

“Ok,” Sam said, seeing the good sense there. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Bucky said, bitter, and looked at the floor when Sam glanced at him. He didn’t move for the next couple minutes, standing dead still in the doorway, watching Sam pack. “Look,” he said, eventually. “I'm sorry I said that stuff.”

“It’s ok,” Sam said, automatically, not looking at him.

“I didn’t mean – I don’t think you’re running away,” Bucky said, and Sam felt another rush of anger. Clearly Bucky did think it, even if only for a moment, or he wouldn’t have said it.

“I know,” Sam muttered. He picked up his book and wallet from the bedside cabinet, dropped them carelessly into the backpack.

“Sam. Can we talk about this? Please?”

“Look, Bucky. I’m. I’m so sorry. But I’ve gotta –” Sam was almost crying himself by this point, tears prickling hot behind his eyes, the urge to turn away. He couldn’t think about what Bucky was feeling, or how much this hurt. All he could think was _god, I need to get this over with_. “I gotta go, ok? I gotta go now.”

“Can I,” Bucky said. “Will you.” He looked so scared and sad and guilty, for a moment Sam forgot how angry he was, and had to cross the bedroom to pull him in for a desperate hug. Both of them shaking, pressing against each other so hard it hurt.

“Stay,” Bucky murmured, his face pressed against the side of Sam’s neck, and he choked back a sob and said it again, even softer, “please. Stay.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam said, and then he let go of Bucky. Took a step back. Picked up the black backpack and walked out of the apartment.

It felt like both the easiest and hardest thing he had ever done.

~

Driving to the location in Nick’s message took over an hour, taking him outside the city and into what looked like farmland. He pulled into a field at the side of the road. Killed the engine and just sat there for a minute, in the warm dark Louisiana night, wondering what the fuck he was doing. What was going to happen now, where would he end up? What if Nick was too late, what if their phones weren’t secure, what if the cops or the FBI were about to show up?

How did he even get so deep into the shit that he was sitting here thinking these things?

“_Fuck_,” and he punched the steering wheel, once, twice; then buried his head in his hands. His phone buzzed in his pocket – his actual everyday phone, not the burner – and he swiped a finger across the screen, unlocking it. A message from Bucky. He thought about leaving it, not opening it, throwing the phone out of the car window, stamping on it and crushing it to pieces. Imagined Bucky sitting there, back in the apartment in New Orleans, clutching his own phone and waiting for a reply. What a break-up story. _My boyfriend got a mysterious phone call and ran away to Africa and left me on read for_ –

For how long? How long would he be sent away for? Would he ever be allowed to come home?

He opened the message.

_Whatever happens, I love you_

Sitting there, he became conscious of a very faint humming noise. It sounded a bit like a jet engine, but too quiet, too subtle; and when he got out of the car and looked all around, he couldn’t see where it could be coming from. There were no lights in the sky, no vehicles approaching.

He swiped his phone open again, texted Bucky back, trying to put into words the overwhelming feelings that were rising up in his throat, threatening to choke him. _I know. I love you too. I’m sorry._

The next message thread down was with his Mom.

What could he say to her? Was it stupid to text her at all, would he be putting her in danger if he did? He couldn’t just disappear without a word, he couldn’t do that to his family, he’d never forgive himself. But what could he possibly say that would reassure them that he was ok? What if it wasn’t going to be ok?

He could hear that humming noise again, a little louder, and then felt the faintest shudder in the ground, like a distant earthquake, or like something heavy had landed nearby. Then the air seemed to shimmer, and right ahead of him, thirty feet away, a shiny black jet just _appeared out of nowhere_, sitting in the field like it belonged there.

Sam was still gaping stupidly when a ramp hissed down at one side, and a man stepped out.

He was tall, dark, wearing what looked like a military uniform, but not one that Sam had ever seen before: mostly black, with dark purple piping. As he came closer, Sam could see that he wore black gloves on his hands, so thin and skin-tight they might almost not be there at all.

“Sam,” he said. “I’m a friend of Nick’s.” His accent was vaguely familiar, a little like some of the guys Sam had worked with overseas, in Rwanda and the Congo.

“Nick wasn’t lying about Africa, I guess,” Sam said, and the guy nodded.

“Can you please give me any phones or other devices you have on you?”

_Keep all electronics switched off until the Captain has turned off the fasten seatbelt sign_, Sam thought, and pushed back a hysterical laugh.

He still had his phone in his hand. He still hadn’t messaged his family. He tapped out a few words, barely able to think – _hey mom, sorry if I can’t be in touch for a few days, give my love to everyone_ – and handed it over. A moment later, he remembered the burner phone, and gave that to the man as well.

“Thank you,” the African guy said, politely. “Do you have your belongings? Anything you need to bring with you?”

Sam took a step back to the car, picked up Bucky’s backpack, shut the car door carefully, quietly.

“Let’s go,” he said.

~

Sam was expecting another secretive landing spot, another anonymous field. Maybe a jungle or a swamp. But they landed, barely an hour later, on a normal runway, and there were buildings not far away that looked like a commercial airport.

“Where are we?” he asked the pilot.

“Cuba,” came the answer. “Good luck, Sam Wilson.”

And then the pilot was climbing back into his jet, leaving Sam to be greeted by two more guys, in jeans and t-shirts this time, not uniforms; though he didn’t miss that they were both armed.

They took him to a white little room, a concrete box not much larger than a prison cell, with a shower and toilet in one corner. It had a real bed, which put it one step up from jail, but no windows. No natural light or fresh air, and for the first few minutes Sam just sat on the bed with his head between his knees, breathing as slow as possible so that he wouldn’t panic and flip out.

The door was locked. There was a man outside it with a gun. The door was fucking locked.

They took his passport, wallet, house keys, the key for the car, the paperback book he hadn’t finished reading. They took the little notebook where he’d been keeping an occasional journal during the road trip: reminders to buy postcards or bottled water or sunscreen, notes on anything beautiful or funny or unexpected they’d seen that day, a few lines recording his mood and feelings, even some embarrassing amateur poetry. Sunsets over beaches and the condensation on the side of a beer bottle and Bucky’s eyes changing color under different light, morning and evening.

They brought him food, and it tasted better than he was expecting. He tried to crack a joke, something about five star service, and the guard taking away the empty plastic tray smiled and nodded.

“How long am I gonna be here?” Sam asked, then wondered if he should try to say it in Spanish, but the guy shrugged.

“A few hours. You need anything?”

“Can I call my family?” he said, knowing the answer would be no, and the guard shook his head.

“Sorry.”

Half an hour later they brought him a mirror and an electric razor, asked him to shave his head. Gave him a pair of glasses with thick black frames. They took a couple photos, headshots, standing against the blank white wall. After another couple of hours, they brought him a fake passport, a wallet, a phone. The documents were Canadian. The phone didn’t work. They led him out of the little white room and put him on a commercial flight to Sao Paulo.

~

He stepped off the plane in Sao Paulo in the early hours of the morning and followed the crowds through the airport in a narcoleptic daze, wondering how long it’d been since he’d last slept. It felt like weeks. Airports were so fucking weird, clean featureless liminal spaces, looking pretty much the same any day of the year, any time of the day or night. He’d been in so many over the years, and never really gotten used to it.

Don’t freak out. Keep walking. Act normal.

He almost lost it just before passport control. What if they could tell the passport was fake? What if there had already been an alert sent out, and the border guards were watching out for his face, ready to grab him and ship him back to the States to spend the rest of his life in a little concrete box?

In the end it was an anticlimax. The guard, bored and sleepy, glanced once at his face and once at the passport before waving him through. There was a woman waiting for him in the arrivals hall, the name from his fake passport written in block capitals on a cardboard sign. Like the two guys in Cuba, she was dressed casually, but Sam could see the outline of the shoulder holster under her jacket.

She led him to the parking lot, told him to turn out his backpack on the back seat of her car so that she could search it, checking all the pockets and seams; then allowed him to repack and took him back into the airport.

More fake documents, with the same photo that had been taken just a few hours before in Cuba, but a different name. Another smartphone that didn’t switch on. It would look too weird, Sam supposed, for someone to be travelling overseas without a phone. More tickets, a direct flight to Addis Ababa, leaving in one hour.

“If anyone asks, you’re visiting family,” the woman said. “Your contact in Addis is called N’Dele. He’ll meet you at the airport.”

Another plane, another airport. More strangers who knew his face, leading him places, giving him instructions. Sam could feel himself getting more and more tired, dazed. It was weirdly easy just to keep moving, keep following orders. He was lost and confused, these other people seemed to have the situation under control, so he’d do what he was told. If it was all a con, or about to fall apart at any moment and end up with him in prison, well. At least he’d get some sleep.

At Addis airport there was a small van with several other people sitting in the back of it, all black people, all looking as bewildered and exhausted as he felt. They barely spoke, but in the few words that were exchanged, Sam only heard American accents. After a few hours of driving they were transferred to what looked like an army truck, then a couple of different cars, then another bigger truck with a strangely silent engine. Each time he caught a glimpse outside, the view was different – villages, towns, open grassland, forests. He slept, had nightmares, woke abruptly, hoping he hadn’t cried out, slept again.

Eventually the truck seemed to enter a city – there were more voices, sounds of other vehicles, shafts of light through the canvas.

The truck came to a halt, and they all stumbled out onto soft ground. It was full dark outside, but in the distance Sam could see lights, bright blueish white and warm yellow, stretching out in irregular patterns, like seeing a city from the air at night.

Directly to the side of the truck was a building, with stone steps and a ramp leading up to an open door; and standing in the doorway was a middle-aged man, wearing a patterned robe over loose trousers and sandals.

“Welcome, my friends,” he said, looking along the little row of filthy, exhausted Americans. Then he smiled, and said the last thing Sam was expecting to hear. “Welcome to Wakanda.”

### 2030 | United States

“Wakanda,” Bucky says, blankly.

“Yep,” Sam says, wanting to smile.

“The – you – hang on, _what_?”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I said,” Sam says.

“God, it –” Bucky sighs, runs a hand through his hair. “It’s like something out of – I don’t even know. A political thriller? Fake passports – I can’t believe they…” he trails off, deep in thought. “They must have been planning it for ages. So many people involved, across different countries, it must have taken so much money! And nobody knew – nobody here, I mean, nothing about you got back to the cops or – Sam, you know the FBI were after you guys?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I can’t believe Nick was behind the whole thing,” Bucky says.

“Well, he had a lot of help,” Sam says. “Bucky, do you know – did you hear anything? Do you know where he is?”

Information had started to trickle through, after a few years. Sam had a pretty good idea, by around 2025, where most of his old friends and comrades were: who else had made it out, what countries they might have gone to, who had gone into hiding within the US, who had been arrested. Who’d ended up in prison; and who had managed to produce good enough alibis, or smart enough lawyers, to walk free. Who had died. But about Nick Fury – the enigmatic bastard – he never heard a thing. Not even rumours.

“No idea. I’m sorry,” Bucky says. “He disappeared around the same time you did. The cops were after him too, but they never caught up with him, I guess. I like to think he’s been sipping cocktails on a beach somewhere for the last decade.”

“He earned at least ten years of vacation,” Sam agrees.

They fall silent for a moment, and Sam looks around the little courtyard. The sun’s out, and a few more people have come outside, chatting, queueing for coffee.

“So what happened?” Bucky asks. “After you got to Wakanda?”

“Well, we had to go to the,” and he can’t find the word, all that’ll come is the Wakandan name, “_isebe lokufuduka_, uh, in English you’d say immigration office, I guess.”

A look of concern crosses Bucky’s face, and he leans in a little toward Sam. He’s assuming this part of the story is going to suck, Sam realizes. He’s expecting something painful, a lack of care, maybe even violence. Something beyond the existing trauma of the whole situation.

It’s not just that he sometimes gets confused, switching between languages, momentarily forgetting a word in one and having to pause in the middle of a sentence or insert a word from the other. It’s also that sometimes words mean the same things, from one language to another, but the implications are so completely different. He says _immigration_ in English and Bucky, who’s lived through the last few decades of American politics, is thinking about border walls and armed police, families torn apart and kids in cages.

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” Sam says.

“Ok,” Bucky says. “What am I thinking,” and he’s got that look on his face, that open curiosity that Sam – that Sam used to love so much.

“It’s hard to explain,” Sam says, eventually. “And that wasn’t until the next day anyway – should I start with when we first arrived? How much of this do you wanna hear?”

Bucky just looks at him, quiet. One eyebrow raises a little.

“All of it,” he says. “Go on. What happened when you arrived?”

“They took us into this dining hall,” Sam says. “It was beautiful, this great long table, wood, with patterns carved into it. Big enough for, I don’t know, forty people? We all sat around one end of it.” A sad little huddle of people, exhausted and lost. “They gave us food – god, it was so good, we were so hungry we’d have eaten anything at that point, but it was incredible.”

### 2020-2023 | Wakanda 

There was berbere-spiced lamb, fonio with nuts and pomegranate seeds, stuffed cabbage leaves, fried plantains, fresh fruit juices and tea to drink. All traditional Wakandan food, though he didn’t recognize any of it at the time and didn’t have the energy to think about it, just scooped it all into his mouth as fast as possible.

After the meal they’d been gently herded into another room, this one laid out like a dormitory, or very cosy barracks. Soft, thickly padded bedrolls on the floor; a polite distance apart, so you probably wouldn’t hear your neighbor crying in the night, unless they were real obvious about it. On one side of the room, a door led to bathrooms with tubs and shower cubicles.

Everything they might need. Sam wondered what would happen if they tried to leave.

He took a shower, moving slowly and staring at the wall, which was tiled with some sort of smooth black stuff, like slates cut from an underground mine. It felt good to be warm, and clean, and not hungry. That was about all he was capable of thinking, in that moment.

He dressed in a clean t-shirt and shorts from his backpack, and got into one of the sleeping bags on the floor. Lay back, looking up at the ceiling, where a few dim and faintly purple lights shone. There were small sounds of movement around the room, as everyone got ready for sleep. For a long while, it was quiet.

The first voice that spoke up out of the dark was a woman’s, wry and sharp. “Well, this is a shitshow, huh?”

Sam heard a couple of little giggles, noises of agreement, then a guy said softly, “you know, when we talked about _back to Africa_, I don’t think this is what we had in mind,” and then they were all laughing out loud, shocky and relieved.

“I’m Renée,” said the first voice. “I’m from Chicago.”

“Abdi,” said the man. “Queens.”

“I’m Sam,” Sam heard himself say. “Washington, DC.”

Slowly, in turn, each person spoke up. All they shared was their names, and hometowns. Nothing about what had brought them there, why they’d had to run. Just the names of people and the names of American towns and cities, spoken quietly into the dimly lit room.

~

The next morning there was food again, and coffee, and then they were taken out of the room one by one, escorted by – were they cops? Soldiers? – guards of some kind, all very calm and friendly, with weird science-fiction weapons strapped to their belts, things that looked like laser guns and collapsible spears. Sam brought his backpack. Bucky’s backpack. It held all his possessions, and it was the only familiar object in the world, so he clung to it like a lost kid with a teddy bear.

When they got out onto the street, Sam stopped dead in his tracks, staring, mouth open.

There were skyscrapers everywhere, perfect shining glass overflowing on all sides with plants, like the buildings themselves were a complete ecosystem. It looked nothing like any city that Sam had ever seen before. He realized, and the thought made him feel dizzy and exhilarated and bewildered all at once, that what it looked like was the descriptions and illustrations in that book, about Wakanda, that he’d read as a child.

The guards led him onto a streetcar, all shining glass and chrome, that _floated_ above magnetic rails, through sunny streets lined with market stalls. For the whole brief journey, he stood with his hands and face pressed against a window, gazing out at everything they passed.

The streetcar pulled up outside a wide, low, single-storey building, and the guards ushered him inside, wished him good luck, and left.

The inside walls were painted in bright, sunny colors – yellow, orange, green. The waiting area was a circular room with skylights in the ceiling, comfortable couches and armchairs, a flatscreen TV on one wall, toys for the kids. Two glass-fronted fridges held a variety of snacks and drinks.

There were no guards or cops in the room. No weapons, no bars.

Plenty of the people there looked tired or stressed. Some were barefoot, wearing shabby or dirty clothes; a few had bandaged injuries. There was a baby complaining loudly in another room, kids sleeping on the floor. One young woman was sitting bent forwards in her chair, pulling her headscarf down in front of her face, trying to hide the fact that she was crying.

The woman at the front desk was about Sam’s mom’s age, and the welcoming smile she gave him made him feel a little choked up.

“I, uh, I’m not sure what name to give,” Sam said. The passport in his back pocket said _Isaiah Johnson_. The passport that had taken him from Cuba to Brazil had said _Jacob Harris_. What would happen, he wondered, if he decided to just disappear? If Isaiah Johnson, aged 31, from Toronto, walked out of this building and booked himself a one-way ticket to – somewhere. Anywhere. He could join the Peace Corps. Build orphanages in Nigeria. Tend bar in Johannesburg. Going to Wakanda wasn’t Isaiah Johnson’s childhood dream.

Of course, he couldn’t do any of those things. Neither Isaiah Johnson or Sam Wilson had a cent to his name.

“Where have you come from?” the desk lady asked.

“America. Uh, the USA. I got here last night.”

She nodded, and pressed a button on her desk. Moments later, a door over to the left of the desk swung open, and another woman appeared in the doorway, looking Sam up and down.

She was young, probably younger than Sam, and big – broad shoulders, wide hips and a soft curving belly. She wore a tight, searingly bright orange dress and black high heeled shoes; her hair piled up on the top of her head in a swirl of braids.

“Come in,” she said.

The room was small, with big windows letting in the sun. A desk, with a futuristic flatscreen computer on it, sat against one wall. Another screen, mounted on the wall, was playing a soothing rotation of landscape pictures. The chairs were low and comfortable, facing each other in the center of the room, nothing between them but a woven rug on the floor. It felt, to Sam, very much like a therapist’s practice room.

The young woman sat down in one of the chairs, folding her hands together in her lap.

“I’m Funeka,” she said. “What would you like me to call you?”

“Sam,” he said, shrugging. It made as much sense as anything else. And maybe he wanted to hang on to something familiar, some part of himself that still existed, even if it was just his first name.

“Welcome, Sam. You must have a lot of questions.”

Must he? His mind was blank.

“Would you like to tell me about your journey?” she prompted, after they’d been sitting in silence for a minute.

“Not really,” Sam said. “Can I call my family?”

“We’re limiting communications with the United States at present,” she said, and something about her voice, her calm professional tone, made him furiously angry. And then right on the heels of the anger came fear, a gross cringing sort of fear, curdling in his stomach. _Don’t get angry. If you get angry they might decide you’re a threat, and then not let you stay_.

“What’s your job?” he asked, trying to bite back the anger. “Are you an immigration officer?”

She looked at him for a moment, inscrutable, before saying a word in a language he didn’t recognize. Wakandan? No, it was called Xhosa, right? Like the South African language.

“I don’t know what that means,” Sam said, frustrated.

“That’s my job title. It means that I’m here to support you, Sam. I can help you settle in to your apartment, and look for work, and access whatever you need in your new life here.”

“All that in one word, huh.”

“It doesn’t translate well,” she said, with an elegant little shrug.

The reason it didn’t, he realized some time later, was that there was no such job in the US, or indeed in any other English-speaking country. Funeka, professionally speaking, was a person who wouldn’t exist in most countries, but of course made perfect sense in this one. Of course every new arrival to the country would get their own personal border guard slash cultural attaché slash careers advisor slash peer counsellor. That was just the sort of thing they had in Wakanda.

He tried not to feel bitter about it.

“Alright,” Funeka said, after Sam had sat in front of her in silence for another couple of minutes, sullen and exhausted like a kid in the principal’s office. “Let’s talk about your housing options.”

~

The Americans needed to be split up, Funeka explained, for security reasons. It was unlikely that any foreign agents would gain access to the country, but it was always possible, and ten people with American accents living in the same area would look suspicious.

Some people went to rural areas where they could get back to nature, living in huts and tending goats or some shit. Some people went off to the mountains to stay with the weird monkey people, which seemed like some kind of self-hating bullshit to Sam, but maybe it didn’t have the same implications outside America. He wanted to stay in the city, anyway. If he was gonna be ripped away from everything he’d ever known and exiled to a mysterious African country, he was gonna stay where the hot weather and all the futuristic tech was.

“These are called kimoyo beads,” Funeka said, showing him a gunmetal-gray bracelet with three small, spherical beads on it. She clipped it neatly around Sam’s wrist and pressed her fingertip to the first bead, which glowed blue for a moment. “This one is for local communications. You can call me, the main refugees’ support line, the housing department, and some other local facilities. The middle bead is emergency communications. This one -” she tapped the third bead, and it glowed purple - “is to pay for anything you need.”

“I don’t have any money,” Sam said. He tilted his arm back and forth, watched and listened to the beads clacking gently together.

“You have eight hundred Wakandan dollars per month,” Funeka said, and her cool, professional smile cracked into a genuinely amused one at the look of shock on his face. “Thanks to our universal basic income programme. It should be enough to cover everything you need, things are much cheaper here than in the United States. Your apartment is free, as is all medical care and public transport, of course,” she added, as if it was an afterthought, as if she wasn’t blowing Sam’s mind.

All the things they’d talked about back home, everything they’d argued for when trying to imagine a better society, everything they’d hoped would exist in America one day. It was some kind of fucked up irony, that Sam had to be ripped away from everyone and everything he knew and loved, in order to find it.

Funeka took him to a one-bed apartment, on the third floor of a low-rise block shaped like a parenthesis, smooth white concrete curving gently around a communal garden. Lots of windows, lots of sunlight. A balcony with a table and four chairs. There was also a table and four chairs in the kitchen. Who was he supposed to invite round for dinner?

The apartment had soft lighting, and a high pressure shower, and a comfortable bed, and a hundred TV channels on the futuristic flatscreen on the wall. Wakandan shows with English subtitles, news and sitcoms and dramas from all over the continent, even international news – and that was a headfuck, the first time he switched to a news channel and saw a photo of his own face.

The American news channels had somehow got ahold of his mugshot from 2016, that dumbass nonsense arrest in DC, when a bunch of them from Food Not Bombs got hauled into the local precinct for the terrible crime of giving out free food in a public park. And it shouldn't have been a shock to Sam, he'd known how the American media works since he was a kid, he'd seen plenty of charming candids of white criminals and mugshots of innocent black people, but. Somehow he never imagined it would happen to him. Seeing himself described as a gang leader, a conspirator to commit murder, a _weapons mastermind_ who used his knowledge from his military service to encourage others to attack the government.

There were FBI agents on the TV, claiming to have prevented a terrorist attack, a mass armed uprising that would have killed innocent civilians alongside law enforcement and politicians. Arrests had been made, they said, though they wouldn’t give names, so Sam didn’t know who else might have got away in time, and who was looking at life in prison.

He sat in front of the screen for hours. Looking at the photos of the wanted people, holding his breath as he waited to see friends, family, comrades. Feeling sick with relief and guilt when most of them turned out to be strangers. If this really was all one big conspiracy, Nick’s reach extended a lot further than he’d imagined.

The fridge and cupboards in the apartment were well stocked. Rice, beans, lentils, basic spices, cooking oil, fresh produce, milk. Protein bars and bags of chips in the cupboards, a few packaged things that he guessed were the Wakandan version of TV dinners in the freezer. For the first few days he barely touched the food in the apartment anyway, he was out every day, in meetings, on walks; and every few hours a plate of snacks would appear, or Funeka would be steering him towards a market stall or a little storefront cafe and saying _here, try this_. It almost felt like a vacation.

So, once the official settling-in period was done and he was left alone in the apartment, it took him the best part of a week to work his way through all the food.

He didn’t _mean_ to stay inside the apartment for a week, not really, not consciously. Going outside just started to feel… difficult. Complicated, but also pointless. Why put in all the effort?

Emails came through a few times each day, popping up on the flatscreen and sending a little buzz through the beaded bracelet on his wrist. Glossy adverts for courses at the university, invitations to apply for jobs, Funeka checking up on him. He didn’t bother to read most of them. He was vaguely conscious that he was sleeping a lot, and falling asleep at weird times, and that his brain felt sort of dark and mushy and like there were a lot of things that would be upsetting if he allowed himself to think about them. Hovering just around corners, waiting to pounce. So, not thinking was the best thing to do. Sleep and TV and eating and not thinking.

But then, of course, the food ran out.

And the thought crossed his mind – because of course it did – that maybe this was the answer, the solution. Maybe food was unnecessary. Maybe he, and his family, and Bucky, and everyone back home, and all the professionally kind Wakandan social workers, would all be better off if he just –

He got up off the kitchen floor. Closed the empty fridge and went to take a shower.

If he wanted to kill himself, there were much quicker and more effective ways than sitting on the floor of his shiny free high-tech apartment and just waiting.

He didn’t want to. Not really. He just wanted to go home.

~

The nearest market was a five minute walk from the apartment, and it was beautiful – even on that day, in that state of mind, he could see the beauty of it. The warm sunlight bouncing off the stacks of gorgeous fresh fruits and vegetables, the brightly-colored awnings shading the market stalls, the people. The people, and their clothes and their makeup and their jewellery and their smiling talking laughing hugging, leaning across stalls to touch hands and kiss cheeks. Some of them looked like National Geographic photos and some of them looked like achingly cool fashion students and some of them looked like no other person Sam had ever seen in his life before.

The little voice of reason in the back of his head, the small part of him that was still operating correctly and still sort of able to experience joy, that had got him up off the kitchen floor and out of the apartment – that part of him was drinking it all in, yelling in delight. Look at the sun! Look at the earrings on that guy! Look at all the _black people!_

But it couldn’t quite touch him, not properly. There was a barrier, a veil, something holding him back. A fear, a sense of not-belonging, a feeling that all this might not be real.

He tried to focus. Food, he needed food. Something easy to cook, a few days’ worth of meals. Maybe a snack, right now, to keep him going, give his brain a sugar rush to convince it that everything would be ok.

There was food everywhere. There were plenty of options and he had money, he had hundreds of dollars that he hadn’t even had to earn, he didn’t need to worry about where the next paycheck was coming from because this was real, he was really here, it wasn’t a vacation or an adventure it was his _life_ now and there was food everywhere and people and noise and why the fuck was he freaking out –

When he came back to himself he was sitting on the ground, half hidden behind a market stall, pressing his back against the wall behind him so hard that it hurt. There were a few people gathered around, one guy crouching down in front of him, a look of concern on his face, saying something Sam couldn’t understand. For a moment he felt his heart rate kick back up again – _you’re in a foreign country you can’t speak the language you’re lost these people can’t help you_ – but he clenched his hands into fists, willed his breath to slow down.

“I’m sorry,” he said, to the man in front of him. “Do you speak English?”

“Of course,” the guy said. “Are you alright? Would you like me to contact someone for you?”

“No, it’s ok,” Sam said, and reached into his pocket for his phone – which wasn’t there, of course. He didn’t have a phone anymore; and if he did, who would he call?

“Here, drink this,” said another voice, and the woman running the market stall handed him a cup, filled with bright red liquid.

“Thank you,” Sam said. The cold, sweet fruit juice seemed to help clear his head; and as he lowered the cup back down from his mouth, he saw the bracelet around his wrist with its three beads. One was for communication. He tapped it, and said, a bit awkward, “call Funeka. Please.”

The bead gave an almost imperceptible little buzz, and then a few seconds later he heard Funeka’s voice, as clear as if she was standing beside him, “Sam? How can I help?”

“I had a panic attack,” Sam said. His voice came out weirdly calm, almost dissociated. Like he was giving a medical report, on himself. “I’m in the market near my apartment. I don’t need immediate medical assistance. I don’t have any food at home and I’ve been having suicidal thoughts. I need – I need help,” and his eyes were prickling with tears, and his whole body felt shaky and sweaty with the adrenaline crash, but it felt good to make himself say it out loud, to ask for help and assume that he would get it.

~

The therapy center was on the ground floor of one of the skyscrapers he’d seen the previous week, with the plants that seemed to grow out of the walls. It was near the university, a short walk from Sam’s apartment.

The therapist’s name was Achieng, and she was a small, wiry woman in her sixties, who wore a soft-looking blouse and floor-length skirt, but carried herself with the bearing of a four-star General. Around her neck she wore a long, delicate silver necklace, with a short string of beads at its end – kimoyo beads, Sam realized, like the ones he wore on his own wrist. Her gray hair was almost as short as Sam’s.

“I would like us to meet three times a week,” she said.

Sam found himself gritting his teeth, holding back the urge to say _I don’t give a fuck what you’d like_ or_ is that the special offer for traumatized American criminals_ or possibly _well, I ain’t got nothing better to do with my time_. He said, “yes ma’am.”

“My suggestion is that we spend two sessions each week here in my therapy room, and one session each week elsewhere.” She ran a finger across one of the beads on her necklace, and a section of the wall, to Sam’s left, turned from warm polished wood to a blue-tinted screen. The display looked like a week-by-week calendar, with three days of each week lit up. Sam thought, _Monday Wednesday Friday_. Then he thought, _what do they call the days of the week here?_

How could he live in a place where he didn’t even know what Monday was called?

“Yes,” he said, again. “Ok.”

~

“I feel like I don’t need to be here,” he said, a week later, back in the same comfortable little office. It turned out the waiting list for therapy, in Wakanda, was all of a week.

Achieng said nothing, just looked at him steadily. Waiting for him to elaborate. He remembered, suddenly, moments when he’d done just the same thing. Sat quietly, giving someone the space to talk, to open up.

“I was only going to therapy every two months back home,” he said. “I was working as a counsellor myself, and we would have sessions every two months to support us at work. But I don’t need –” he cut himself off, hearing his voice getting louder. _Don’t get angry._ “I don’t have my job any more, so. It feels like there’s no need for me to be here.”

“Would you like to tell me about your job back home?” Achieng asked.

“I had two jobs,” Sam said, and he could hear the little note of antagonism creeping into his voice. _Yeah, we gotta work more than one job back in America. We don’t have any of your universal basic income, free housing, properly functioning welfare system shit_. “I was an EMT – uh, I did emergency medicine. On an ambulance,” he glanced up, to check that she was following, and received a little nod in reply. “And I was a counsellor. I did some work with high school kids and some with vets – military veterans. Just the last two years, since I finished studying.”

“Is that something you would like to do here?”

“Be a counsellor?”

“Yes. You’d have to do a university course. But you could be a therapist here.”

It felt a little like he was speaking to a high school careers advisor. Or, what he imagined that would have been like, if he’d gone to a better high school and not just been offered the choice between minimum wage, unemployment or the military.

“You got much call for therapists here?”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought this place was _perfect_,” Sam said. “Everyone looks happy, they all got everything they need, right?”

“Do you feel like this place is giving you everything you need?”

“_No_,” Sam said, and pressed his hands over his eyes.

~

“I've been told I can’t contact my family,” he said, at the next session. “I’m worried, and I don’t get why I can’t – there must be a way to do it safely. Do they even know I’m alive? I don’t know what’s happening back home, what if they’re getting in trouble for what I’ve done? And I want to speak to –” he cut himself off.

They sat in silence for a couple minutes.

“Who do you want to speak to,” Achieng prompted, gently, when it started to become obvious that Sam wasn’t going to open his mouth again without help.

“I don’t know how to _talk_ about things here,” he burst out. He’d always hated this feeling, the fear and self-consciousness, the shame and tension that stopped up his voice, stopped him from being honest.

“You can talk about things however is comfortable for you,” she said, and it was exactly what Sam himself would have said, if he’d been in her place.

“I saw two women holding hands at the market yesterday,” he said, and looked at Achieng’s face, his stomach clenching, watching for any little sign, the slightest hint of discomfort or disgust. She looked right back at him.

“People here may be more open than you’re used to,” she said. “We tend to see all relationships, all expressions of love, as…” she paused, thinking. “Equal to one another. Regardless of the gender of the people involved.” She was picking her words very carefully, and it suddenly occurred to Sam that while he was trying to guess what Wakandans would think of him, she was trying to guess what an American might think of _them_.

Her expression didn’t change. Calm, interested, supportive. If he was some backwards American homophobe, she’d still be there for him, all active listening and unconditional positive regard.

“I want to speak to my boyfriend,” he said. “I miss him.”

~

“It’s not just about the people I miss,” he said, a few sessions later. They were having one of their outdoor sessions, sitting to one side of a community garden in the North Triangle. There was a big group of people digging and planting seeds on the other side of the garden, a mixture of elementary school kids and very old people from the nearby supported living houses. Sam had expected it to be distracting, but it was sort of comforting. He might have been alone and crazy, but everyday life was carrying on all around him. “It’s the work I was doing, too,” he went on.

“Your jobs?”

“No,” he said. “I was thinking more of all the _other_ work. Activism, I guess. Community organizing. Trying to make the world a better place.”

A little kid’s voice carried over to them, raised in excitement, one hand in the air clutching something. Probably found a really gross worm, Sam thought, feeling a sense of comfort in it, the disgusting sameness of small children the world over.

“This would be run by activists, back home,” he said, trying to explain. “If there was a community garden back in the States, if there was a programme for kids and old people to do gardening together. It would be run by a group of people in their spare time, most of them also working two or three jobs just to pay the rent. And they’d have to spend more time fundraising and begging for money on the internet, and there would never be enough money, and people would complain about the noise, and maybe homeless people would come and hang out at the garden and then people would complain about that, too. And then after six months the land would be bought up by property developers and turned into a Whole Foods where nobody in the neighborhood could afford to shop. So I love that this is here, but it makes me angry,” he said. Realizing, with a little start, that it was probably the first time since coming to Wakanda that he’d managed to _talk_ about feeling angry, instead of just feeling it.

“And I feel guilty,” he went on. “Back home it’s so hard right now. People are fighting so hard. People are dying or getting locked up. What right have I got to sit here in the sun and feel sorry for myself because your community gardens are too nice?”

“Hmm,” she said, and they sat for a while in silence. Then she said, lightly, like it was a simple question that had just occurred to her; “do you believe you have to suffer, to make the world a better place?”

“It’s not that I _want_ to suffer,” Sam said. “It just feels like it’s inevitable.”

~

“You said I could work as a therapist here,” Sam said, several weeks later. He was in a foul mood, had slept badly. He felt like picking a fight.

“Yes,” Achieng said.

“_How_,” he said. It clearly wasn’t a genuine question, and she wasn’t going to answer it. She was just going to sit there and wait for him to explain himself, and for a moment he hated her. “How the fuck,” he said, letting more anger creep into his voice than he’d ever shown her before, “how the fuck can I be a therapist here? I don’t speak the language. I don’t understand your culture. It’s different from everything I know. I was brought up Baptist and I haven’t gone to church for fifteen years. I don’t believe in God. How the hell can I be a therapist for people who believe in animal gods? How can I be myself and help people who think that precious metals in the soil are magic, that they can drink magic herbs and visit their dead relatives on the astral plane? It’s bullshit.”

He sat back in his chair, hands stuffed in his pockets, only just resisting the urge to kick something.

“If that’s the case,” Achieng said, and she had that look on her face that said she was about to challenge the shit out of him, “you might also ask, how can I be a therapist for you?”

“Maybe you can’t,” Sam said. Vicious, bitter, hurt. He wanted to get up and walk out.

“I think maybe what you’re really asking,” she said, gentler now, “is: how can you be yourself in this country? What kind of life can you have here? Who are you, now that you live in Wakanda instead of in the United States?”

~

“If I did want to do therapy here, as my job, I mean,” Sam said. It had taken a few months of thinking, of working through a whole bunch of other issues, but he finally felt capable of raising the subject again. “What sort of work could I do? Who could I work with?”

“This is just a thought that I’m having,” she said. “And you should feel free to take it or leave it, but – what about working with other refugees?”

For a moment, he pictured the immigration office waiting room, as he’d seen it on his very first morning in the country. That young woman, barefoot and crying, pulling her hijab down over her face to hide. Then he thought again about what Achieng had said, and –

“Wait, what do you mean, _other_. I’m not. I’m not a refugee.”

“Sam, you left your home country,” she said. “You left the only country you’ve ever lived in, due to the threat of violence from the state. You came here with nothing. You have political asylum here, which protects you from the American government, who would certainly demand that we send you back, if they knew you were here.”

“Yeah, but –”

He wanted to explain himself, clearly lay out his argument so that she’d see that he was right, that it was a dumb overreaction to call him a refugee. Those people had survived war, and trauma, and horrific violence. He didn’t have a right to use that term. She was just trying to make him feel sorry for himself.

How would more self-pity help? How would labels help? Calling himself a refugee wouldn’t change anything that had happened. It wouldn’t take him home. It wouldn’t let him see his family again. It wouldn’t make him any more happy or grateful.

He couldn’t get the words out. There was a lump in his throat that felt like it was choking him.

“I’m not,” he started to say, croaky and quiet. There was a pain in his chest, a real physical ache, and he put one hand over his heart, and tried to speak, but instead he started to cry. Just tears at first, then uncontrollable sobs, loud and shameful like a little kid, a few incoherent words making it through the noise. _I hate this_ and _I want to go home_ and _I miss my mom_. His whole body was shaking, he couldn’t even hold himself upright. He slid off his chair to sit on the floor, wrapping his arms around his knees and hiding his face.

Achieng got up, sat down on the floor beside him. She didn’t say anything, just sat there, and held his hand, and listened as he cried and swore and shouted, until the words and tears started to dry up. Until the anger and misery started to die down, replaced by exhaustion, and a strange feeling, some mixture of relief and emptiness and peace.

“Ok,” he said, finally, sitting up, rubbing his eyes. “Let’s do this. How do I apply for university here?”

It was the only option, really. He wasn’t going home. He might as well try to build a life.

~

That first day of school feeling never really went away, Sam thought, looking up at the university building. Even when you were in your mid-thirties and already had a diploma from a perfectly good American community college, thank you very much. He shifted his feet, settled his bag more comfortably on his shoulder. He was nervous as hell.

“I don’t think it gets any less intimidating, the longer you look at it,” came a voice from beside his left shoulder, and he turned to see Achieng, a long shawl draped around her shoulders, smiling at him.

“What d’you mean, I’m totally calm and not intimidated at all,” Sam said.

“I’m going to allow you to lie to me this once, because we’re not in a session,” she said, and Sam grinned at her.

“On your way to work?”

“Visiting a colleague. We’re preparing a conference paper. On the experiences of refugees,” she said.

“Well, let them know I’m a success story,” Sam said.

“You all are,” she said, cheerfully. “See you next week,” and gave him a little tap on the shoulder before heading up the steps to the big glass doors.

Sam should really go inside. The only thing that could make his first day worse would be showing up late. Maybe he’d just take one more minute to enjoy the sunshine.

Someone brushed past him, apologized quickly in Xhosa. Sam responded in the same language, not bothering to look at the guy, still staring up at the imposing front of the building.

“Wow,” the voice continued, now in lightly accented English. “Your accent is terrible.”

“Oh, I know,” Sam said, turning, and ok. Who the hell was _this_ guy.

“I'm Themba,” the guy said, as if he’d read Sam’s mind. He was _gorgeous_. About Sam’s height but a little thinner, wearing a soft red sweater with the sleeves rolled up. Tattoos on his lower arms and one on the side of his neck, swirling vines and flowers. He wore his hair in locs, pulled up in a messy bun on the top of his head. Carefully, he shifted the thick stack of books he was carrying into his left arm, in order to shake Sam’s hand.

“Sam. Are you a student?”

“Well, mostly I’m a writer,” he said. “But I teach, too. How about you?”

“I’m a student. On the psychology, wellbeing and community mental health programme. What do you teach?”

“Introduction to modern Wakandan literature,” he said.

“I haven’t read much yet,” Sam admitted.

“How’s your reading in Xhosa? Any better than your accent?”

“Reading’s easier,” Sam said. “I can take my time and it’s less awkward to keep looking up words,” and Themba smiled at him, charming and genuine.

“You should join my class,” he said. “If you’ve got any space in your timetable. Psychology’s important but poetry is too.”

“I’ll think about it,” Sam said, and nodded goodbye, and watched the guy run lightly up the steps. Then he took a deep breath, ran a hand over his hair, and followed.

### 2030 | United States

“Well, shit,” Bucky says, leaning back, taking a deep breath. He thinks for a minute, then gives Sam another of his little sideways smiles. “Have you thought about writing a book about all this?”

“Oh, sure,” Sam says. “Unfortunately I literally have a letter from the US government telling me I’m not allowed to do anything to draw attention to myself, so. Better not.”

“You could publish it anonymously,” Bucky says. “I’d read it,” and they’re both smiling at each other now. Sam’s got this sort of warm feeling in his stomach. He feels like he could stay right here, talking with Bucky, all night. All weekend.

“So, you’re a therapist now?”

“Sort of,” Sam says. “It’s kind of a different job over there. I do a lot of community work. It’s good.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “You seem, I don’t know. Happy. Settled. You always used to – I always got this feeling, back then, that you felt like you could never do enough. You know? Like there were so many people who needed help, and no matter how hard you tried, you could never help all of them.”

"You never said," Sam says, surprised.

"Wasn't sure how," Bucky says. "Didn't want to criticize. I admired you. I wanted to be more like that."

Sam’s not sure how to respond to that. “How about you,” he says, instead, changing the subject. “What are you doing with your life?”

“I’m a teacher,” Bucky says, a faint look of surprise on his face, like he doesn’t quite believe it himself. “After – well. I went back to school in ’22, got my degree, did Teach for America. I work in an alternative high school in Chicago.”

“Always knew you’d go back to college,” Sam says, and there’s probably some sort of inappropriately proud smile on his face, because Bucky blushes just a little, glances away.

“Eventually,” he says, shrugging.

“What do you teach?”

“History, politics, religious studies. Art history, sometimes. It’s a pretty small place. Kids who’ve been kicked out of other schools, mostly.”

“Helping the disadvantaged youth turn their lives around, huh? So, are you more Hilary Swank in _Freedom Writers_, or Michelle Pfeiffer in _Dangerous Minds_?”

“Sam,” and Sam can’t help laughing at the appalled look on his face, but Bucky recovers quick, smiling ruefully, “hey, maybe I’m Mariah Carey in _Precious_.”

“Baby –” the term of endearment slips out before Sam can catch it, and time seems to slow down for a moment while they both notice it and don’t mention it – “you’re too white to be Mariah Carey.”

“True,” Bucky says, and his voice sounds sad but he’s biting his lip to hold back a grin, “but I do have a five octave singing range and a great rack.”

“At least one of those things is a lie,” Sam says, but he can’t help it, he looks downwards, checking out Bucky’s chest in his tight t-shirt. The muscles in his chest and shoulders are big and defined, he’s a lot bigger, stronger looking, than Sam remembers. He catches himself, looks up.

“Yeah, admit it,” Bucky says. “You missed all of this,” and he’s smiling, self-conscious and smug.

“I missed you,” Sam says, and it comes out too raw, too honest; a truth bomb in the middle of their joking around. He almost wants to take it back.

“I missed you too. God, Sam. I missed you so much.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam says. It feels inadequate and not entirely right, but those are the words that come out. Bucky looks away, one side of his mouth twisting up in a miserable little smile.

“You don’t – don’t apologize,” he says. “It’s not like you _chose_ to leave and break my heart.” He’s trying to make it sound like a joke, but Sam can hear the truth of it.

“Still,” he says. “I am sorry. I’m sorry that it happened. I’m sorry I had to leave you.”

“I’m sorry too,” Bucky says. “I could’ve been – more understanding, I guess. More supportive. I said some fucked up things.”

“You don’t need to apologize either,” Sam says. “It was – it was a nightmare. Anyone would’ve lost their temper. Felt abandoned. I was only mad at you for a few weeks,” and he tries to smile, but it’s a struggle.

There’s a long silence.

“So, I guess that’s that, then,” Bucky says.

“What?”

“_Closure_,” he says, an edge of mockery in his voice. He’s looking down at his feet again, and Sam desperately, for some reason he’s not even sure of, wants him to look up.

“I don’t feel like I’ll ever get closure with you,” he says, impulsive. As declarations of feelings go, it’s not great. As a sentence, it barely makes sense. But something of what he means – some small hint of the terrifying depths of love and confusion and guilt and fear and desire and things unfulfilled – must get through.

Bucky looks up, and his eyes are damp. He sniffs a couple times, swipes his hand under his eyes. “Sorry,” he mutters.

“It’s ok.”

“It’s getting late,” Bucky says, looking around. The courtyard is almost empty now, the sun’s setting, it’s getting colder. The coffee cart guy has long since packed up his coffee cart and gone home. “Where are you staying?”

“With my parents,” Sam says. “How about you?”

“I got a hotel room,” Bucky says. “Not far from here, actually.” He looks away. His fingers move slightly, toying with the hem of his jacket. Sam thinks about asking. Thinks about just inviting himself back to the hotel. Casual, relaxed. _We could have a drink, catch up_. “How are your parents doing?” Bucky asks.

“Uh. They’re fine,” Sam says, knocked off his train of thought. “They – I don’t know.” There’s no positive way to answer the question, really. “They’re nearly seventy, and I missed ten years of their lives. They’re doing pretty good, but – you know what I mean.”

Bucky probably doesn’t know – how could he – but he nods anyway. Then he takes a deep breath, like he’s psyching himself up, and says, “so, there’s a pretty nice bar at the hotel.”

“Yeah?” Sam says.

“You wanna come have a drink? No pressure,” he says, earnest. “Just – I – it’s been so long, and I thought – it’s ok if you don’t want to.”

“Nah, I want to,” Sam says.

“Ok,” Bucky says.

~

It’s a nice hotel. Not fancy, nothing Bucky can’t presumably afford as a very occasional treat to himself on a teacher’s salary, but nice. Pleasant decor, very American: trying to look understated and rich at once. The whole ground floor is open plan, a wide sweep of marble floor from the reception desk through the bar. There’s a whole bank of elevators, with shiny gold call buttons.

Sam texts his mom, while Bucky’s buying their drinks. It feels faintly ridiculous, at his age, to be telling his mother that he’s going for a drink with a friend and (maybe? Hopefully?) might not be back until the next day. But after everything his family’s been through, it seems right to let them know.

“So,” Bucky says, sitting down with their drinks and a handful of bar snacks. “What have you been up to that I haven’t heard about yet? Are you seeing anyone?”

“Oh, straight in there with the real questions,” Sam says. “Yeah, as it happens. I am.”

### 2030 | Wakanda

The first few years in Wakanda he’d stayed single, mostly. He’d needed time to settle down, to _work on himself_, as Americans on TV would say. Time to – maybe not _get over_ Bucky, not exactly, because how did you ever really get over a break-up like that, so abrupt and painful and mixed up with the shit that had turned your whole life upside-down? But time to heal. Time to start seeing it as another thing that had happened in his life, another thing that he was capable of surviving.

He’d had some hookups, then some relationships, some more serious than others. None lasting very long. Nobody he’d felt any desire to settle down with. But maybe that had started to change, recently, because then there was Themba. Who Sam had actually met all the way back in ’23, on his first day of university. They’d been friendly acquaintances, then friends. Finally, Sam had asked him on a date, and to his surprise, Themba had immediately said yes.

“I was waiting for you to ask,” he said, smiling at the shock on Sam’s face. “What took you so long? What’s that look for? Are you regretting it already?”

They’d been together for just over a year, and Sam hadn’t regretted a thing.

~

Sam lay back on the bed, feeling the breeze from the open window against his skin. Sweat cooling, nerves still pleasantly buzzing.

“You’re fucking good at that,” he called, and Themba laughed as he came out of the bathroom, sat back down on the bed. He was still naked, beautiful and unashamed; out of Sam’s league, really. The tattoos on his chest and arms seemed to move as he picked up a hair elastic from the bedside table, pulled his locs back into a loose ponytail at the nape of his neck, then leaned back into the cushions with a soft sigh. “You wanna go again?” Sam said, grinning, “I’m pretty sure I could go again,” and Themba looked up at the ceiling, watched the fan turning.

“Remind me which day you leave? To go back to the States?”

“Well, that’s a mood killer,” Sam said, still smiling, trying to keep it light, but Themba turned onto his side, looking at Sam’s face, serious.

“Do you think you’ll see him?”

“Who?”

“What do they call it in America…” he pursed his lips, scrunched up his brow as if deep in thought, though Sam didn’t believe for a second that he’d actually forgotten whatever phrase he was searching for. “Ah, yeah! The one who got away.”

“Bucky isn’t –” and Themba’s eyebrows went up, and Sam shut his stupid mouth, a little too late.

“The fact that you knew who I meant without my having to say his name,” Themba said, and Sam wanted to turn away, or hide under the sheets, or kiss Themba’s infuriating intelligent face; anything to avoid having this conversation.

“Look, I. I don’t even know if he’s alive.”

“You have a Google alert on his name.”

“You know, sometimes I don’t like this thing where you know everything about me.”

“If you still wanted to be casually fucking around and not making real connections, that’s what you’d be doing,” Themba said, and some of the humor was gone from his voice. “Ironic, I guess. You become ready for a meaningful relationship only when you know you’re leaving the country – leaving the continent –”

“Hey, I asked you to dinner over a year ago,” Sam protested. “I had no idea back then that I’d ever be able to go back to the States. And I’m not leaving for good. I’ll be gone a couple months, at most. I’m coming back here, I’m coming back to you.”

“If you see him –”

“I’m not going to see him, it’s –”

“_If you see him_,” Themba said, immovable, and Sam stopped arguing. Sat up, legs crossed, looking at him.

“Sorry. Go on.”

“I’m not trying to push you away,” Themba said.

“I’m not interested in cheating on you,” Sam said, stubborn.

“Good,” he said, eyebrows up again, and Sam couldn’t help grinning. “But,” he said, thoughtfully, “what do we consider to be cheating?”

“_Oh_,” Sam said, having a moment of realization, “this is the _polyamory discussion_ –”

“You were waiting for it?”

“Obviously,” Sam said. “You Wakandans and your enlightened poly-pan-sexuality – everyone’s fucking polyamorous here, it’s like a tabletop gaming convention,” and he was still laughing at his own joke when Themba got on top of him, pressing him down into the pillows and kissing him breathless.

“I don’t want you to feel like I’m leaving you for some – some white boy,” Sam said, several minutes later. “Like I think I could do better than you.”

“You know you can’t do better than me,” Themba said, teasing.

“I know,” Sam said, too serious.

“But you can have – you could be with other people as well as me. If you wanted.”

“Is that what you want?”

“I want us to be happy with each other,” Themba said. “If we’ve got that, it doesn’t matter to me so much what either of us might do or feel with other people.”

“I’m not disagreeing,” Sam said. “That sounds great, honestly. It sounds perfect. I just don’t know how it would work in reality. How it’d feel to be with someone else, or to know you were. What if I fuck it all up?”

“What if we fuck up in some other way,” Themba said. “What if the world ends tomorrow! We could lie here saying _what if_ forever.”

“So you’re saying,” Sam took his time, wanting to get his thoughts in order. “_If_ I see Bucky – which I don’t think I will – and _if_ he’d even be interested in hooking up with the ex who abandoned him and broke his heart and now has a new life and a committed relationship on the other side of the world – and _if_ I feel like making the, probably stupid and regrettable, decision to go for it, you… are ok with that.”

“You’re very optimistic today,” Themba said, laughing, and Sam pulled a pillow over his own face, wanting to scream into it like a teenage girl. “Listen,” Themba went on, gently pulling the pillow away, “you have… unfinished business. With Bucky. You know you do. And of course I don’t want you to leave me for him. But I don’t think you will. Your life is here. You want this, with me. You making love with someone else in another country doesn’t steal anything from me.”

### 2030 | United States

“So, you’re polyamorous now,” Bucky says, a look in his eyes like he’s about to start laughing.

“Look, it’s the 2030’s, what do you want from me,” Sam jokes, but Bucky just looks at him.

“Was that something you wanted? Before?”

“I think I can probably be happy either way,” Sam says, honest. He’s been thinking about it a lot in the last few weeks, and this is the best conclusion he’s managed to come to. “I want… I want to be with people I care about, who care about me and respect me. I don’t think relationships like that necessarily need to be monogamous. I guess. You’re laughing at me.”

“Nooo,” Bucky says, trying to hide his grin behind his empty glass.

“You are,” Sam says, “but it’s fine. You want another drink?”

All the way over to the bar, he can feel Bucky’s eyes on him, like a physical touch, a presence. He orders top shelf whiskey for both of them, feeling brash and reckless and somehow joyful.

When he gets back to the table, Bucky has a thoughtful look on his face.

“Here. What are you thinking about?” Sam says, handing over one of the drinks and sitting himself down.

“Thanks. You remember how sometimes we’d go out,” Bucky says. He’s resting the fingers of his right hand on his whiskey glass, tilting it gently back and forth, watching the liquid wash up against the sides of the glass. “And I’d flirt with other people?”

“And keep looking at me, the whole time,” Sam says. He remembers.

“Well, you were always the one I wanted the most,” he says, and Sam realizes they’ve both leaned forward a little. Their hands, his on the table and Bucky’s hand on his drink, are very close together. And Sam doesn’t know if it’s the alcohol, or the reminiscing, or the topic of conversation, or how many hours they’ve spent today sitting and looking at each other, or the way that Bucky’s looking at him right now, eyes dark and mouth slightly open, but something in the air between them seems to shift, and he thinks, _oh, ok. We’re going there_.

“I remember how you always looked at me,” he says, “like you wanted me to drag you home and fuck you, remind you who you belonged to,” and Bucky’s next breath is audible even from across the table.

“Yeah,” he says, after a moment. “I remember that too,” and Sam has to look away, take a sip of his drink, because it’s almost too much.

“So, Sam Wilson.” Bucky takes a drink, swallows, breathes out. Sam could watch his mouth all night, the way it shapes itself around breathing and drinking and saying Sam’s name.

“So?”

“So,” and Bucky’s smiling, and Sam knows that smile. That’s his cocky, bad behavior, _I’m gonna say something inappropriate but you’re gonna like it ‘cos I’m just so damn cute_ smile. “Did I mention I got a room in this hotel?”

“Do you,” Sam says.

“It’s a pretty nice room,” Bucky says, and his smile widens, like they’re in on a joke together.

“It’s a nice hotel,” Sam says.

“You wanna come up and see?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, finishing his drink and getting to his feet. “Yeah, I do.”

They don’t speak, while they’re waiting for the elevator. They don’t speak inside the elevator. Sam’s looking dead ahead, and he’s just starting to think he’s got the wrong idea. That Bucky wasn’t blatantly flirting. Then he feels Bucky’s hand, resting gently on his lower back.

“Is this –” Bucky starts, but he doesn’t get another word out, because Sam turns to him, grabs him by both shoulders and kisses him on the mouth. It’s urgent and intense and exactly what Sam’s been wanting all evening, all day, since Bucky looked at him across that meeting room and silently said his name.

“Mmm, ok, yeah,” Bucky says, breathlessly, “I –” and the elevator doors swish open, and they’re stumbling out into the corridor. Sam gets him up against the wall right there outside the elevator, one hand groping his ass, the other hand around the back of his neck; and Bucky’s wriggling against him, laughing. “Sam, I – the key card, we should get in the room, come on –”

“Which room?”

“Nine one three, it’s just a bit further,” he’s got his hand in his jacket pocket, looking for the card, and Sam grips his neck tighter, marches him down the hallway, grinning at the quiet, half-moaned _fuck_ that comes out of his mouth at being manhandled.

“You still like that, huh,” he says, low, and Bucky shivers, almost trips over his own feet. They get to the door and Bucky’s still fumbling for the key card. Sam takes full advantage, pressing up against him from behind, grabbing his hips hard, kissing the back of his neck. Greedy, possessive. He wants to overwhelm Bucky, blow his mind. Show him what he’s been missing out on for the last goddamn decade.

The door swings open and Sam hustles him into the room, pushing the door shut behind them, then lets go and takes a step back. Takes a deep breath, enjoying the sight of Bucky turning to face him, his hair tousled, a blush rising on his face.

Sam takes his hand, pulls him in for another long, deep, toe-curler of a kiss. It feels so good, new and familiar at once, the slight scratch of Bucky’s stubble against his own face, the way Bucky’s mouth opens up under his own. The way Bucky nods and moans and laughs, all at the same time, when Sam starts unzipping both of their jeans, gets one hand around Bucky’s cock and the other hand in his hair.

“_Fuck_, Sam. So good,” he says, and then he’s taking a step back to lean against the wall, pulling Sam with him, shifting his feet – he’s keeping himself steady, Sam realizes, keeping his balance – so that he can get his hand down between them and start jerking Sam off as well.

For a moment Sam almost wants to laugh. Themba had talked about him _making love_ with Bucky, and here they are, tipsy on two drinks and exchanging handjobs up against a wall like sixteen year olds. The next moment, Bucky’s gripping him a little tighter and leaning in to kiss his neck, and he’s too busy gasping and trying to stay on his feet to laugh.

“Been thinking about this all day,” Bucky says.

“Don’t lie,” Sam says. “You’ve been thinking about this for the last ten years,” and it’s the look on Bucky’s face at that moment – shocked, smiling, mouth open like he’d argue if he had any breath left – that makes him come.

A few moments later, Bucky sags back against the wall, grinning, looking down at the mess they’ve both made of each others’ clothes. Then he straightens up again, a look of discomfort on his face, and rolls his shoulders back.

“Ok?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Just a bit sore. Long day. Too old for drunk handjobs up against a wall.”

"Oh, _you're_ too old," Sam says. He wants to reach out, get his hands on Bucky's shoulders, dig into the sore muscles and smooth them out. Somehow that seems more intimate than what they've just done. "What do you do when it hurts like that?" he says, instead.

"Take a bath, usually," Bucky says.

"Ok," Sam says. "You see what's in the minibar, I'll get the bath started for you."

The bathroom’s small, but it has a good enough sized tub. He takes off his t-shirt and gives his belly a cursory wipe, washes his hands, then starts the water running in the tub.

For a moment he thinks, this was a bad idea. Where the hell can they go from here, that actually has any chance of making them both happy? They should go back to their respective lives and never contact each other again and just continue living with the imaginary versions of each other in their heads. Idealized, crystallized in time. The one who got away. Maybe he should call Themba. _Help, I just fucked my ex, just like you knew I would. How did you know? Who gave you permission to know me like that?_

_Got any more wisdom and advice to share? How to not fuck this up? With him, with you, with everything?_

He realizes that the bath is getting full, and leans over to check the temperature and turn the taps off. Straightening up, he swipes his hand across the steamed-up mirror, looks at himself critically.

Sam doesn’t have any issues with his body, he knows he looks good. Sure, he’s heavier than he was ten years ago, squishier around the middle. But he works out more days than not, goes running and swimming, hikes in the mountains on weekends; all of which goes a way towards balancing out the fact that he’s forty-two years old and spends much of his working life sitting in an armchair. His hair’s only just starting to go gray at the edges and these are laugh lines, not wrinkles. Still, it’s strange.

“It’s strange,” he says, sticking his head back around the bathroom door.

“What’s strange?” Bucky’s crouching down in front of the minibar, and Sam notices how the tight black t-shirt stretches across his broad shoulders and solid torso. His body’s changed too.

“Well, I never had reunion sex after not seeing someone for ten years before.”

“Oh, is that what this is," Bucky says.

“Get in here,” Sam says, and Bucky grins again, wide and beautiful, and comes into the bathroom.

Sam leans against the sink, watches Bucky get undressed and get into the bath, stretch out in the water with a satisfied little sigh. For another moment everything feels so familiar, like they can just pick up where they left off, like they were never apart at all. Like an old married couple, sharing a bathroom.

“Get in,” Bucky says, looking up at him. “If you like.” He sits up, pulls his legs up so he’s only taking up half of the bath, knees drawn up to his chest; and Sam thinks, _what the hell. Why not_. He quickly strips off, climbs into the bath, and they sit facing each other, like little kids sharing the tub.

“Are you sure your boyfriend would be ok with this?” Bucky says, after a moment.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “I promise.”

“God,” Bucky says. “We really became adults, didn’t we?”

“Speak for yourself, I was an adult the last time you saw me.”

Bucky smiles, and for a minute they just sit there, looking at each other.

“I meant to ask you how long you’re gonna be back for,” Bucky says.

“I can’t stay any longer than two months,” Sam says. “I’ve got a job to go back to, it’s not fair on them if I stay away too long.”

“It sounds like you’re happy there,” Bucky says.

“Yeah, I,” Sam says, and then stops, as what he wants to say suddenly, finally, comes together in his head. “It’s home. You know? There are people here I love. I’ll miss my family like hell when I go back. But I’ve got to go back.”

“I get it,” Bucky says softly.

“They can come visit me, though,” Sam says. “You could come visit. They still don’t really let tourists in but I could get you a visa. If you wanted. You could come for summer vacation.”

“And stay with you and your boyfriend?”

“You’re really hung up on the whole boyfriend situation.”

“Look, the last time I did the polyamory thing I was a clueless twenty-two year old slut, ok. I don’t know how to hook up with people with boyfriends like a functional adult.”

“You’re doing fine so far,” Sam says, and Bucky gives him the sweetest little smile, and leans in to kiss him on the cheek.

They sit there talking in the bathtub until the water starts getting cold, and Sam’s eyelids are feeling heavy with tiredness. They get out, dry off but don’t bother to put on any clothes, collapsing into the double bed and cuddling up under the blankets to fall asleep.

Later on they fuck again, in the dark blue middle of the night, sleepily grinding against each other, touching and sucking and neither of them get fully hard, but somehow it's some of the best sex of Sam's life. And it should be terrifying, how easy it feels, how natural. It shouldn't feel so right, knowing how much time's passed, how much they've both changed, how far apart they live, the commitments they've made to new lives and places and people.

“I’m here,” he whispers, somewhere in the middle of it, turned on and half-asleep and feeling something huge and awful and incredible threatening to burst open in his heart. “I’m really here,” and Bucky pulls him in closer and rolls his hips up against him and murmurs, “yeah, Sam. You’re right here.”

~

“Yeah, it’s good. Interesting.”

Sam wakes, sees Bucky, sitting on the chair by the window, pulling the curtain open just a little so he can look down to the street, letting in a shaft of morning sunlight. He’s wearing black boxer briefs and nothing else, and Sam takes a moment just to enjoy the muscular curve of his back, his upper arm; his fingers holding the phone up to his ear, how his hair’s sticking up at all angles.

“You’ll never guess what though, Nat,” he says, and then listens to something she says, and laughs softly. “Nah. Good guess, though.”

“Hey,” Sam says, not wanting to eavesdrop, and Bucky turns to him, smiling.

“Nat, I’m gonna put you on video, ok?” He gets up and comes back over to the bed, grinning, and Sam has just enough time to pull the blankets back up to his waist before Bucky’s sitting back down next to him and holding up his phone, so Sam can see –

“What the _fuck_,” Natasha shouts. “Bucky! What the hell! Sam –”

“Hey, Nat,” Sam says. God, it’s good to see her face.

“Don’t fucking _hey_ at me, Wilson, where the fuck have you _been_? Oh my god, Steve, get in here right now –”

“What?” comes another familiar voice, sounding alarmed, and Steve’s head pops into frame, and then both of them are yelling at once, and Sam just rests his head on Bucky’s shoulder, and laughs, and it feels a little bit like coming home.

Because after all, why shouldn’t he have two homes? Why shouldn’t he have friends and family and lovers in America and Wakanda? Why shouldn’t he be the one who gets to decide what his life looks like, how he can help others while also doing the things that make him happy?

It’s 2030. It’s a new world.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Feel free to say hi in the comments or on Twitter ([@gyroscope_fic](https://twitter.com/gyroscope_fic))


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